Gaylene Preston
Film Director/Producer

This speaker's paper is available here.

Gaylene Preston has directed and co-produced some of New Zealand's finest cinema features, television series and documentaries. She is a storyteller whose films have a distinctive flavour, which entertain while presenting serious subjects with humour and warmth. Critics consider her work to be consistently outstanding, reflecting the country and the people of this land.

Her films such as Mr Wrong, Ruby & Rata, Bread & Roses, War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us, and Punitive Damage have been selected for most major film festivals in the world including Venice, Sundance, Toronto, London, Sydney and Melbourne. Her films have won awards in France, Spain, Switzerland, Canada Australia and the USA, - the most recent being a Silver Clio (Cannes) and a Mobius (Chicago). Gaylene has also won 10 NZ Film awards.

Gaylene has served on most major industry boards including the NZ Film Commission (1979-85), the Creative Film Fund (Chair 1983-86), the NZ Film Archives, the Producer and Director Guild executive (1989-93), the New Zealand Film & Television Awards Society (Chair 1996-99). She has given guest lectures at Otago, Victoria and Auckland Universities. Gaylene is regularly invited to lecture on her retrospective work in the USA at Lyola University (New Orleans), Mass University, Okahoma State University and Richmond University (Virginia).