MARRIAGE is an intimate portrait about the intersecting and antagonistic relations between generations and institutions. Filmed in 1997, it traces two sides of one mountain in a remote village in Southwest China. A matchmaker named Zhang attempts to unite two families while guiding them through six formal rituals for marriage that date back over 2000 years. What is at stake in the negotiation of the dowry is not merely the money involved in this inter-family transaction, but the "saving face" that is constitutive of social status in their communities.