Some of My Best Friends are Women

The same year the United Nations declared an 'International Year of Women', New Zealand held its first International Women's Film Festival. This groundbreaking feminist documentary debuted alongside two other local films. Expat Irish/Scot filmmaker Deirdre McCartin presents three candid interviews across generations of Kiwi women. Trade unionist and grandmother Flo Humphries recalls the shame heaped on female divorcees in the 1940s; librarian and solo mum Mag Freeman celebrates hard-won self-confidence, and student Kirsten Warner is scathing about the career options offered at school.

If you wanted to be an engineer there was just no way you were encouraged and no opportunity for you to learn; you couldn't learn how to take apart a car, how to fix an engine, what lights and fuses were, how they worked. There was no technical education whatsoever.

– Kirsten Wagner on how school didn't cater for girls who wanted to learn machine skills, early in this documentary

Key Cast & Crew

Kathryn De Nave

Research

Robin Scholes

Camerawoman, Research

Judith Aitken

Research

Carole Stewart

Editor

Dairne Shanahan

Interviewer

Deirdre McCartin

Producer, Director, Research