Thirty years since Dame Gaylene Preston’s award-winning documentary revealed the lives of women during World War II, she talked to Newsmakers about moment that inspired her.
It was a song on the radio that gave the hint of something hidden that first prompted her idea for a documentary, War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us.
“The song, You Must Remember This, came on the radio and my mother, who was approaching 80 at the time, looked dreamily at the window and said, ‘Oh, I remember that I remember… this song was very special to me during the war… with your father.”
While Preston described her father as being fairly settled after the war, she realised her mother had not been able to tell her experiences.
“The time of the war was a time of pain that was not discussed.”
Preston decided to gather the voices of seven women for her documentary, including her mother, Tui Preston.
Preston told them: “We don’t want to talk about the war; we want to talk about you and your experiences as young women during that time.”
In the film, the women open up about forbidden sex, love, and loneliness, stories that even caused the crew filming to shed tears.
Preston said that every ten minutes, they would change the roll in the camera, “and every time we stopped, we cried”.
Her mother threatened to pull out of the film, but the night of the premiere, Preston saw how the film had moved her after Tui squeezed her hand with tears on her face and told her, “don’t let the lights come up”.
However, when they did, “she got hugged out of the cinema, and she was the last to leave the party,” Preston said.
“I do feel that I’ve got rid of a lot of baggage,” Tui said in the film. “And I feel free, and I know that it was the right thing to do.”
Later, when Preston called Tui from Cannes and asked how she was doing, Tui replied, “I am walking tall in the city”.
Thirty years since the documentary beat Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures for New Zealand’s top film prize, the film takes a legendary slot in this year’s New Zealand Film Festival.
“I’ve always believed that cinema, cinema and New Zealand films can go anywhere,” Preston said.
“…A film takes people out of their world… You come out of your seat, and you meet the movie.”
