Gaylene Preston

Kaleidoscope

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.

Release Date1987-07-26

Charactersd Subject

Making Utu

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.

Release Date1983-02-05

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Perfect Strangers

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.

Release Date2003-10-09

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count18

Mr. Wrong

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

Release Date1986-05-02

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count6

Bread & Roses

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.

Release Date1993-07-18

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1

Operation 8

Operation 8 examines the so-called 'anti-terror' raids that took place around New Zealand on October 15, 2007 - asking how and why they took place and at what cost to those targeted.

Release Date2011-04-17

DepartmentProduction

JobConsulting Producer

Ruby and Rata

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.

Release Date1990-07-14

DepartmentProduction

JobCo-Producer

Vote Count1

Home by Christmas

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.

Release Date2010-04-29

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count3

Breath of Peace

A fascinating story of effort towards global peace, featuring eight peace people of Aotearoa New Zealand – spanning some seven decades – peacewalkers, petitioners, and folk in small boats and on the surfboards sailing out into the harbours in the face of huge warships. A unique documentary, bedded in the movement of aihe (dolphins), tohora (whales), kotuku (white herons), toroa (albatross) and with an original score blending contemporary waiata and traditional Maori musical instruments.

Release Date2005-07-25

DepartmentProduction

JobConsulting Producer

The Monster's Christmas

On Christmas Eve, a nameless little girl reads 'The Monster's Christmas' storybook to her teddy bear, as something sneaks around in the trees outside her window. She hears a noise in the other room, and thinking that it's Father Christmas, she goes to investigate. She finds one of the monsters, who has come seeking help to defeat an evil witch that has stolen all the monsters' voices.

Release Date1981-12-25

DepartmentArt

JobArt Direction

Vote Count5

Hope and Wire

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.

Release Date2014-07-03

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Episode Count3

Celeste

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.

Release Date2016-08-29

DepartmentProduction

JobExecutive Producer

Jessica

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.

Release Date2021-11-02

DepartmentProduction

JobExecutive Producer

Ellen Is Leaving

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

Release Date2012-09-02

DepartmentProduction

JobExecutive Producer

Vote Count4

Earthquake

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.

Release Date2006-07-01

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

My Year with Helen

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.

Release Date2017-06-10

DepartmentCrew

JobCinematography

Vote Count5

Punitive Damage

The story of New Zealander Helen Todd's law suit against an Indonesian general that she pursued after her son, Kamal, was shot dead in the Dili massacre in East Timor.

Release Date1999-05-16

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Middle Age Spread

Colin is the deputy principal of a city high school (Avondale College, Auckland) who reluctantly applies for the principal's job on the latter's retirement. Colin's wife, Elizabeth - who is losing interest in him -gives a dinner party. Among the guests is Judy, temporarily reconciled with her husband for the sake of the children. Colin - who has taken upon jogging to combat a spreading waistline - and Judy, gradually enter into an affair.

Release Date1979-06-01

DepartmentArt

JobProduction Design

Vote Count1

GRACE A Prayer for Peace

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.

Release Date2025-08-03

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us

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.

Release Date1996-05-09

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count3

Kai Pūrākau – The Storyteller

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.

Release Date1987-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

How I Threw Art Out The Window

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.

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Nuclear Horror Show Parade

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.

Release Date1983-11-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector