How two dames met and made a documentary

Dame Robin White, one of the country's most significant living artists and Dame Gaylene Preston, one our foremost documentarians, had never met before, but after a chat Dame Gaylene realised she wanted to make a film about her new friend.

The resulting feature length film is Grace: A Prayer for Peacewhich premiered at the International Film Festival on Sunday.

Prior to that meeting their worlds hadn’t collided, Dame Gaylene, now 78, told RNZ’s Nine to Noon.

“I spent quite a lot of time out of New Zealand, like mainly all of the ‘70s. So, when I came back to New Zealand in 1977, there were Robin White prints all over everybody's flats.”

Many years later she found herself sheltering from the rain in Wairarapa and was reacquainted with Dame Robin’s work.

“I found shelter in Aratoi, the Masterton Art Gallery, I discovered a very large work of Robin's. It's called Summer Grass.

“It's painted on the back of wallpaper and it's an extraordinary painting. It's kind of like Robin's Northland panels, if you like. And I just sat with that painting for about half an hour and I thought this artist is somebody who aligns with my thinking.”

She realised, Dame Robin was “an artist who is wanting to reveal the unrevealed".

Fortunately, the two did finally meet in person and the film project was set in motion. At the time Dame Gaylene was recuperating from a head injury.

“I made friends with her that day. I'd never met her. It was later when I saw her across a party. And of course, at that time, the head injury, how it worked for me was it affected my perception of sound.

“I could go to the play, but I couldn't do the foyer. If people laughed loudly in public spaces, I was sort of out of there.

“So, it was unusual for me to be in the space anyway. So, when I saw Robin sitting there, I just went and introduced myself.”

They finally got down to talking nitty gritty about the film six months after that, Dame Robin, 79, says.

“We had a coffee and a conversation. And that's when it gelled into what kind of a work it would be, and that it would be focused on the idea of women artists working together, especially acknowledging the way in which we can come together from our different cultural perspectives, from a different experience of learning within our different cultures.”

They didn’t so much discuss what the film would be about as their respective kaupapa, Dame Gaylene says.

“We are both artists who focus on domestic things, and we're both artists who look at revealing things in the culture that are maybe ignored or misunderstood or invisible. So, we didn't discuss the film, it'll start here, and it'll end there and it'll be this and that and the other.

“But what we did discuss, and are still discussing, is our common experience and kaupapa. That's the collaboration.”

The film itself, Dame Robin says, is a work of art.

“In any artwork, you need to look, you need to look again and again and expect to be baffled.”

Her own art remains somewhat mysterious, she says.

“I'm still trying to learn how to paint. And that is lifelong. It's such a slippery fish and that's why I took up painting at art school.

“I can remember exactly the moment at Elam Art School, standing on the driveway, looking down that driveway, looking at the painting studio and thinking, I'm going to do painting because it's so deeply mysterious.

“There are rules and there are no rules. It's just a marvellous world. But you tread there at your peril. But maybe I'm just a risk taker.”

For Dame Gaylene Dame Robin's work was “an absolute gift to film".

“What Robin White is on about is the terror of nuclear war, the question of what are we doing as mothers to encourage our children to a place of peace? Why do we have all these boundaries and barriers, borders when humanity is one thing?

"We're talking about unity, so that's what the film talks about. So, I'm really taking a ride on the wonderful waka that Robin has already created over 50 years.”

Grace: A Prayer for Peace is showing as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival at The Civic in Auckland Friday 8 August, it will be shown at other centres as the festival moves south. It is showing in cinemas nationwide.