Toni Street interviewed Helen Clark and Gaylene Preston on the My Year With Helen media day:
Helen Clark believes she was unsuccessful in her bid to become Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) because the system is rigged against women.
The former Prime Minister of New Zealand made the comments while promoting My Year With Helen, a documentary by Gaylene Preston, which is returning to cinemas soon.
Ms Clark said that while she was proud of all her achievements, including those at the UN, sexism in the organisation meant she never had a chance of landing the top job, regardless of how qualified she was.
"Well it wasn't a fair fight," she said.
An award winning Hawke's Bay filmmaker has shared Helen Clark's bid to become the first woman UN Secretary-General through a moving documentary.
Hawke's Bay is being treated to an advanced screening of Gaylene Preston's My Year with Helen tonight in support of Ikaroa-Rawhiti Labour MP Meka Whaitiri.
The documentary was first screened to a sold-out crowd at The Civic in Auckland during the New Zealand International Film Festival.
Ms Preston said she was looking forward to returning to Hawke's Bay and hoped she would get a similar response here.
WIFT sat down with Gaylene to talk about what she learned from making the film, feminism and how outrage can be invigorating.
At one point in the film, Helen said that women have to believe in themselves and it's up to any woman of influence to encourage others to believe in themselves. Have you always had that confidence or have you learned it over time?
I think you can decide whether you're going to be confident or not. I think resilience is more important, actually. Being able to take the knocks is really the important thing.
Jessica Mutch interviewed Helen & Gaylene on a media day for My Year With Helen. Watch the video below:
Helen Clark’s ill-fated bid for the top job at the UN is documented with extraordinary proximity and passion in My Year with Helen. Alex Casey sits down with the former NZ prime minister and director Gaylene Preston, in an empty foyer at the movies, to discuss the shit that happens.
Of all the firm handshakes in the world, ‘twas Helen Clark’s that nearly crushed my brittle, brittle bones to a very fine dust. Last week – long before the streets of Auckland’s CBD ran red with the sacrificial blood of Don McGlashan – the ex-Prime Minister, ex-Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and tremendous emoji-user was in town with filmmaker Gaylene Preston to yarn about her new documentary My Year With Helen.
Filmed last year during Helen Clark’s bid to secure the position as the first woman secretary general of the UN, My Year With Helen is angering evidence of a reinforced glass ceiling in action. See, no matter how much light it appears to be letting in, a woman is always going to get a big old donk on the head for trying to charge through it. Because, spoiler alert: like a lot of people towards the tail-end of 2016, Clark doesn’t really come out of the experience smiling.
Despite being what looked like a shoo-in to win on paper, a favourite of the media, and surrounded by a group of unwavering optimists, My Year With Helen is all the more fascinating for chalking up a loss over a win. It’s a portrait full of extraordinary candid moments of pause, heavy disappointed air, and a puzzlingly devastating wooden Buzzy Bee atop an office desk. And if that moves you to tears, wait till you see the oceans of curry she cooks for her 94-year-old father back home in Waihi.
"FLICKS: I saw the film in Sydney at the State, at the world premiere, which was a great way to kick it off.
GAYLENE PRESTON: I don’t think it gets much better than that. That was my fifth film there at the State. First actual premiere there, and I’ve always found that that’s a great space. It’s a great cinema to show your film and so is [Wellington's] Embassy. The State is like the Embassy times two, really, isn’t it? It’s got a similar vibe, and the Civic is always amazing because the Civic’s a bit more sort of stately, do you know what I mean?
There’s something about a big theatre – like State and the Embassy – where it’s got a real gathering place feel in it.
I don’t know what it looked like from the stage as you came out to greet the audience after the film, but it seems like when you’re in the audience there that there’s great sightlines onto the stage. So I suppose you’re eyeballing people once you’re up there, right?
I’ll tell you what, that is breathtaking. The first time I walked on to that stage at the State cinema… It’s the same with the Civic, actually. I go up there with the lions and you feel like a little ant [laughter]. The space is so big, and when it’s full of people, it’s just got this vibe to it that’s electric. It’s brilliant. And that’s before the film’s screened.
But at the State, that was a memorable moment. There are standing ovations where some people are sitting, clapping, while some people are standing and putting their coats on and it kind of gradually becomes a bit of a standing ovation. But when a huge audience like that just leaps to its feet as one and does a spontaneous thing like that, it was quite something to see."
"When Helen Clark announced that she would be putting herself forth as a candidate for the role of Secretary General of the UN in April of last year, many assumed she was a shoe-in. After all, how could Helen - our very own Aunty Helen, who became the first elected female prime minister and went on to become the third highest ranking member of the UN - possibly lose?
But then a lot of things didn’t go as expected in 2016. Brexit passed. Donald Trump was elected. And Helen, along with six other women in the running to be the UN’s first female secretary general, was ultimately unsuccessful and stepped down from her role as head of the UNDP not long after.
For the moment in history in which we find ourselves, the story of Clark’s campaign told by Gaylene Preston’s My Year with Helen could hardly be better timed. Not because it’s a story of defeat - but because it’s a story of strength.
“Helen is resilient”, Preston tells me of her subject’s ability to keep on keeping-on, even when faced with seemingly immovable power structures.
“She's taught me a lot about resilience, just being alongside her for this journey.”
Click here to read the full interview at The Wireless.
Red Carpet TV were at the NZ premiere for My Year With Helen, which was held at Auckland's Civic Theatre to a full house.
Watch their report below on the Sunday afternoon below:
"Our film takes us right to the door of the Old Boys Club," Gaylene Preston said when interviewed by Lisa Owen for The Nation.
Watch some of the interview below:
Is the UN an old boys' club? Gaylene Preston on @MyYearWithHelen #nationnz pic.twitter.com/KZinVZCC3B
— The Nation (@TheNationNZ) July 22, 2017
Gaylene Preston paid a visit to the bFM studios to talk about the upcoming release of MY YEAR WITH HELEN, as well as her involvement in the HP48HOURS Film Competition
"Already sold out in Wellington, and likely to be the big-hitter of the festival, Gaylene Preston's My Year With Helen chronicles Helen Clark's campaign to become UN Secretary General last year. However, what emerges from Preston's laconic doco is more a deafening cry for change within the UN itself as it reveals how increasingly close to irrelevance it's coming in representing the people."
Following on from the announcement of My Year With Helen being screened in the Melbourne International Film Festival, it has also just been announced for the Brisbane International Film Festival.
There are four screenings in Brisbane of the film - with tickets for each of the screenings on sale now:
August 21st, Palace Centro, 1pm
August 25th, Palace Barracks, 1pm
August 26th, Palace Centro, 12pm
August 28th, Palace Barracks, 3.15pm
MY YEAR WITH HELEN has just been announced as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, with two screenings happening. Tickets are on sale now for the two screenings, click below to purchase tickets to either:
August 13th, Hoyts Melbourne Central, 6.45pm
August 15th, Kino Cinema, 6.30pm
The NZIFF's director Bill Gosden spoke to Darren's World of Entertainment about the film festival, giving a special shout out to MY YEAR WITH HELEN:
"Which is the film that you will expect will get the best crowd reaction?
My Year with Helen."
The official poster for MY YEAR WITH HELEN has just been released, ahead of the film's general release into NZ cinemas on August 31st. Check out the poster below:
James Croot was recently a guest on Radio Live with Graeme Hill where he discussed the documentaries on offer, including My Year With Helen.
This year's New Zealand International Film Festival boasts one of the strongest line-ups of Kiwi films for many years.
From documentaries to short-films and dramatic features, New Zealand filmmakers are setting up 2017 as a cinematic year to remember. There's something for everyone, from insights into the worlds of hard rockers Head Like a Hole, natural historian Sheila Natusch freestyle-skier Jossi Wells, to a recreation of the invasion of London's Iranian Embassy and a psychological thriller set on a subantarctic island.
Gaylene Preston's latest documentary starts out as a chronicle of our former Prime Minister's bid to become UN General Secretary.
However, despite some warm and intimate moments involving Clarke and her father, the real drama comes from following the machinations of the UN's voting process and all the political factors that come into play.
Gaylene Preston recently did an interview with Radio Live's Sunday Social show, where she talked about My Year With Helen, and the New Zealand International Film Festival.
Click here to listen to the full interview.
MY YEAR WITH HELEN is the first film to sell out a session in the NZ International Film Festival. The film’s first Wellington session on July 30 at the Embassy Theatre sold out on the first day of ticket sales yesterday.
There are still seats available for the second Wellington session on August 1 and both Auckland sessions (July 23 and 25). Click here for Wellington tickets, and here for Auckland tickets.
An observational documentary, MY YEAR WITH HELEN travels alongside former Prime Minister Helen Clark campaigning to become the first woman UN Secretary-General while continuing her work as the highest ranking female at the UN, leading the UN Development Group and managing to stay in daily contact with her 94-year-old father back in New Zealand.
Preston’s cameras explore the cracks between the diplomats, the embedded press and feminist activists as they push for change while caught up in a power process as secretive and patriarchal as the selection of the Pope.
Clark says: “The film conveys how tough it is to break the remaining glass ceilings. May it motivate future generations of women to keep at it!”
Preston: “The film asks the question - what will it take for women to become global leaders.”