A portrait of one of Aotearoa’s greatest living artists by one of our greatest documentary filmmakers. You should expect something special, and that’s what you get.
Preston’s gentle portrait of Dame Robin White will lift your spirits.
Grace: A Prayer for Peace 2025
Dame Robin White may well be one of New Zealand’s most significant living artists, but Dame Gaylene Preston resists that kind of overbearing narrative in her new film. The nearest she comes might be a scene when the seventy-something artist considers one of her iconic 1970s paintings, the kind that sell well as framed prints in public gallery gift shops. “This is me as a young painter trying to figure out how to paint,” she muses.
Surrounding that moment are scenes shot in recent years in Aotearoa, Japan and Kiribati, where White lived for much of the 1990s. We see her as she is now, working at the height of her artistic powers, still energetically moving her practice forward, often with artistic collaborators from other cultures and artistic traditions. We gain an insight into her Baha’i faith-driven belief in peace and shared humanity. This is a masterclass in less-is-more story telling. - Chris Brown
At the heart of Grace is Dame Robin White—a celebrated artist of pakeha and Māori (Ngāti Awa) descent—who finds herself at a vexed moment in human history. In the movie Robin stands ankle- deep in the lagoon at Tarawa, mindful not only of the beautiful seaward expanse but also of the omnipresent, endlessly troubling world of geopolitics, nuclear arms, global warming and the encroaching Climate Emergency.
Grace sets out to answer the question of how an artist might respond to all of this. Described as ‘a prayer for peace’, the film stands as an act of resistance rather than quietism, imbued as it is with the inventiveness, joy, good humour and energy. - Greg O'Brien