"... and They Lived Happily Ever After"
1975 · 13m · Canada
Directed by Kathleen Shannon, Irene Angelico, Anne Henderson
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Young girls and married women discuss marriage and motherhood against glossy romance advertisements. Expectations clash with lived experience across generations.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Three women filmmakers in 1975 making a feminist essay doc that *refuses* to resolve—just lets contradiction breathe between teenage fantasy and adult disillusionment. It's formally restless in a way that makes the messiness feel intentional, not accidental.
A precise interrogation of the marriage myth through juxtaposition, with the filmmakers situating themselves in a lineage of essay cinema and feminist documentary that would define the era—the construction of meaning through montage of voice and image is disciplined and unshowy.
The singular choice here is letting the advertisements do the talking: by positioning glossy romantic fantasies against unvarnished testimony, the filmmakers create friction without editorial hand-wringing, and that restraint is what makes the generational gap feel real rather than didactic.