Episode Details

Dame Gaylene Preston failed her art school degree. The F appeared in the paper the morning results were published. What followed was a move to Cambridge with her husband, a job as assistant librarian at a 900-bed psychiatric hospital, and the discovery that film could give institutionalised patients a voice and a way to prepare for the terrifying prospect of being released into a world that wasn't ready for them. She joins Culture 101 for Fast Favourites, and to talk about Grace: A Prayer for Peace, her new film about artist Dame Robin White, available on RNZ Video.. A visual poem rather than a conventional documentary, it follows White's 50-year practice across New Zealand, Japan and al-Mahdi, and has become the first New Zealand film selected for the Hiroshima Film Festival.