Gaylene Preston

A portrait of one of Aotearoa’s greatest living artists by one of our greatest documentary filmmakers. You should expect something special, and that’s what you get.

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With unique access to high-ranking candidate Helen Clark, filmmaker Gaylene Preston casts a wry eye on proceedings as the United Nations chooses a new Secretary General.

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Hope and Wire is a dramatized edition of what happened to a group of New Zealanders after the 2010 Christchurch earthquakes telling the "real story". They didn't need any extra drama, Christchurch survivors know that.

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A remarkable memoir of resilience, determination and love.Based on filmmaker Gaylene Preston's interviews with her father about his World War II experiences, reconstructed with actor Tony Barry as Ed Preston. Weaving strands of poetic imagined drama, and archival footage into the interview, Preston presents both sides of her parents' wartime marriage: the horror and hardship of battlefield and prison camp juxtaposed with the loneliness and grief of a young wife struggling with a newborn baby and a husband declared missing.Ed Preston, on his way home from rugby practice in 1940, joins the New Zealand Army to go to World War II. His new wife, Tui, is pregnant and distraught, but he tells her not to worry, he'll be home by Christmas. And so he is - four years later - after escaping from a prison camp in Italy. But while Ed is away, Tui has fallen in love with another man.

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The Hawke’s Bay earthquake was New Zealand’s worst civil disaster. Over 250 people died following the 7.8 quake on 3 February 1931. In this full-length documentary, director Gaylene Preston (Hope and Wire) gathers eyewitness accounts from survivors, including kuia Hana Lyola Cotter, who recounts joining the rescue effort as a teen, poet Lauris Edmond, and a student from Greenmeadows Seminary. Included is eye-opening newsreel footage of the damage. Earthquake was nominated for Best Popular Documentary at the 2006 Qantas TV Awards; it won best sound at the NZ Screen Awards.

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When Melanie goes home from the pub with a handsome stranger, she’s captivated by his charm and attentiveness. He sails her away to his ‘castle’- a rundown shack on a deserted island. But when seduction becomes deception and passion becomes possession, Melanie realizes that she has been kidnapped. Torn between fear and desire, Melanie must escape – but her ardent admirer has other plans.

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Seven New Zealand women speak about their lives during World War II: some lost husbands, some got married, some went into service themselves. The director lets the women tell their stories simply, alternating between them talking and archival footage of the war years.

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Based upon the life of activist and trade unionist (and later MP) Sonja Davies. The film covers her life up to 1956, when, at age 33, she was elected to the Nelson Hospital Board. During this period she develops strong socialist beliefs, marries and divorces, at age 17 trains as a nurse, has a romance (and a child) with an American marine who is killed in WWII action. She battles tuberculosis and marries a former boyfriend when he returns from the war. She becomes part of a women's ill-fated campaign to save the Nelson railway line from closure and begins to be elected to political bodies.

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Ruby, an 83 year old trying to dodge a retirement home, rents a room to Rata, a solo mum with sidelines in music and benefit fraud. Rata's son is into arson and shoplifting, while Ruby's nephew is a hapless yuppie wannabe. Marginalised by the deregulated economy of the '80s and living on their wits, they may just find common cause despite themselves.

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Gaylene Preston's documentary on writer Keri Hulme — filmed two years after Hulme shot to global fame thanks to her Booker Prize-winning novel The Bone People — is both a poetic travelogue of Ōkārito (the township she lived in for 40 years), and a sampler-box of musings on Hulme's writing process, whitebait fishing, the supernatural, and the 1200 pages of notes for her next novel, the elusive Bait. Leon Narbey's camerawork is aptly alert to the magical qualities of the coast, from the resident kōtuku to the surf and birdsong peppering Hulme’s crib.

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A small town woman, fresh to the city, buys a used Jaguar haunted by the ghost of a woman who was slain in it.

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This video from Gaylene Preston, shot on her VHS camera, captures an anti-nuclear protest four years before Aotearoa officially went nuclear-free. The footage documents a large team creating dozens of papier-mâché masks and costumes, led by artist Debra Bustin. While listening to Elvis and Johnny Cash, they prepare for a march on 10 August 1983 against the visit to Wellington of nuclear-powered missile cruiser USS Texas. Later there's extended footage of protestors holding handmade anti-nuclear signs, and parading puppets of Robert Muldoon, Ronald Reagan, and the Statue of Liberty wielding an atomic weapon.

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Making of documentary on the set of New Zealand's first epic Utu (1983), working with little money and dealing respectfully with matters of cultural protocol. Merata Mita discusses complex issues of inter-cultural conflict.

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In this experimental short from filmmaker Gaylene Preston, a no-nonsense hitchhiker is subjected to the ramblings of a deeply philosophical driver. Impressively, Peter Cathro delivers the long, stream of consciousness ramble in a single take — while actor Shirley Grace manages to keep a straight face throughout. The driver's musings on art, society and creative expression cannot be quashed (even by a kiss), and it becomes too much to bear for the hitchhiker, who just wants to get to Taihape. Filmed in a lo-fi style, this screened at The Women’s Gallery in Wellington as part of 1981 exhibition Sexxuality.

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This Kaleidoscope documentary timed in with the release of Nicholas Reid’s book A Decade of New Zealand Cinema. The book cherrypicked Reid's favourites from the renaissance in local movies that began with Sleeping Dogs in 1977. Reid and a who’s who of local filmmakers discuss many of the 50+ features from the previous decade (with Bruno Lawrence ever present). They ponder the uniqueness (or otherwise) of Kiwi film. A fondness for rural and small town settings, and forceful, often conflicted, male leads is explored. Neglected areas — Māori film and more of a voice for women — are traversed.

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A portrait of one of Aotearoa’s greatest living artists by one of our greatest documentary filmmakers. You should expect something special, and that’s what you get.

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Jess has a unique style and the confidence to show her creations to the world. With a penchant for fashion, a cereal box creation enables Jess to take a brave step on the catwalk.

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With unique access to high-ranking candidate Helen Clark, filmmaker Gaylene Preston casts a wry eye on proceedings as the United Nations chooses a new Secretary General.

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When Celeste needs some alone time, she watches back episodes of her favourite soap operas. At times the lines between reality and fantasy becomes a little blurred.

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Hope and Wire is a dramatized edition of what happened to a group of New Zealanders after the 2010 Christchurch earthquakes telling the "real story". They didn't need any extra drama, Christchurch survivors know that.

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On the eve of departing overseas Ellen makes the fateful decision to gift her boyfriend a new girlfriend.

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