Episode
Fast Favourites: Dame Gaylene Preston
- Podcast
- Culture 101
- Published
- May 17, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1365
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/culture-101-6608135/episodes/fast-favourites-dame-gaylene-preston/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/culture-101-6608135/fast-favourites-dame-gaylene-preston.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
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.