Documentary China Love highlights magical pre-wedding photography

Olivia Martin-McGuire is an Australian expat living in Shanghai and director of documentary China Love.

The film was recently shown at the Sydney Film Festival, and was planned to be brought to Launceston in partnership with the Breath of Fresh Air film festival.

“Having come from a period of extreme restriction and denial, China is now exploding in the other direction with Chinese brides competing for the perfect and most exotic wedding photos,” Martin-McGuire said.

“For the middle class and mega wealthy, this often means flying to exotic locations with a crack team of hair and makeup artists, stylists and celebrity photographers so they can capture the fairy-tale pictures of love, money and freedom.

“For the less wealthy and those 90 per cent of Chinese who do not own a passport, they have factory style studios with fake sets of exotic locations to shoot these photos."

The film’s producer, Rebecca Barry, said the extraordinary visuals and concept sparked her interest.

“We got some screen development money from Screen Australia which enabled Olivia to explore the world a bit more,” she said.

“The deeper we got we just realised what a beautiful world it was.

“It really does show China in a completely different way.”

UPDATE:

The Launceston screening did not reach the threshold number of tickets reserved in time, however tickets are available for other screenings.

Tickets are available online.

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