Hawke's Bay To Berlin – This Way Of Life (P. VI)

This Way of Life is that rare thing – a truly quintessential Kiwi film. Shot over four years with no budget, the film follows the lives of Peter and Colleen Karena as they raise their six children on the thin edge between freedom and disaster.

The film has been selected to screen in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, one of the top five festivals in the world.

Follow the filmmakers as they blog their journey from Hawke's Bay to Berlin.

Image: Cloud South Films.

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Part V: Mr Good-Enough

At dinner last night with two London based 29-year-old single career girls the conversation turned to the issue of the moment – Mr Good-Enough: the theory that women are too picky and should lower their Mr Right expectations to ensure they get can get married and have kids.

Of course there’s nothing new in maligning women who step outside the conventional – it’s just strange to be heading back into the rabbit hole of female limitation, when for the last few decades we lived in a time of expansion and excitement about what women could do.

Which is why the documentary we are filming here in London, (now called) Yolanda’s Last Portrait is so interesting. Yolanda is 74 and she has broken every convention. She never married, actively chose not to have kids and committed her life to Art.

As a young woman her father told her she would have to choose between being a wife and mother or a great artist. Which opens the issue of expecting to have it all. Perhaps that’s at the heart of Mr Good-Enough – we need to marry someone, anyone really to enable us to have it all. Now more than ever we need more women like Yolanda: wild, irresponsible, selfish, irascible,passionate, determined and really quite crazy. A woman not having it all, but following her all consuming passion. She would never have settled for Mr Good-Enough.

For more, See:
The Blog: This Way Of Life Goes To Berlin
The Trailer: This Way Of Life (official site)
Filmmaker's Site: Cloud South Films

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