Documentary Meets 2.01: Wildwood, NJ (Ruth Leitman and Carol Weaks Cassidy, 1994)

Cause down the shore everything’s all right / You and your baby on a Saturday night / Don’t you know all my dreams come true / When I’m walkin’ down the street with you

Tom Waits, “Jersey Girl”

After a rollercoaster 2021 season, with nourishing doses of non-fiction delivered in between rolling lockdowns, Documentary Meets is back on track for 2022 and ready to hit ‘play’ on the first instalment of season two, which takes as its theme SISTERHOOD.

Join us at Composite on the evening of Thursday, April 21 for a one-off screening of Wildwood, NJ, a bittersweet gem of a beach getaway shot on Super-8 by an all-woman crew – and a favourite flick of Miss Summertime Sadness herself, Lana Del Rey.

The film treads the boardwalk of the Jersey Shore’s preeminent blue collar resort town, functioning as a potent snapshot of nineties fashions and a truly candid camera, which bears witness to the raw desires, crushes and confessions of a spunky set of tween and teen girls and their acrylic-nailed elders.

With an introduction by Isabella Trimboli, a writer and critic based in Melbourne, and the co-editor of print music journal Gusher.