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Celebrating women-loving women: 2

Here's Gaylene Preston on Screen Talk, talking about her life as a filmmaker. I think she's probably made more films—nearly forty—than any other New Zealander, an amazing mixture of features and docos.

Gaylene has often made, as she says in the interview, "some of the invisible things visible", and those invisible things have often been about women's lives. And she's been very supportive of many women—as well as men—so it's not surprising that she says in this interview "There are still less women working in all sorts of areas in filmmaking than I would have hoped then (in the 70s)".

I've had experience of Gaylene's generous support myself. She took me to Films de Femmes in Creteil (Paris) one year. And more recently when we met by chance she explained in great detail how I could use the Screen Production Incentive Fund, sketching out the details on one of the cafe's paper serviettes. I smile every time I see it floating in a file, among pieces of A4 paper.

So she's this week's women-loving woman to celebrate. Her next feature, Home by Christmas, is based on her father's memories of serving in World War II, a companion piece to her classic War Stories: Our Mothers Never Told Us. There's a link to her website on the bar to the right, a list of her films to 2005 here, and her entry in NZ on Screen here.


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