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Life with Alicia, Marisa, Aminat, Keisha, and Božena

2014-08-27

Everything started with a proposal from Gintarė. “Aistė is making a documentary, could you help a bit?” I have known Aistė since university. Over the years, I’ve followed her work in literature, theatre, and television, so I knew this would be something interesting. I had just quit my job and moved to Germany then, so I had spare time to contribute to the project. 

If I could have foreseen what I’d gotten myself into… I first agreed to transcribe all of  Aistė’s conversations with the women.

Interview transcription is the worst thing that I have ever had to do in my journalistic work. Nothing is as frustrating as sitting at the computer with headphones clamped on, listening to the same interview over and over again to make sure you get the exact words written down.

There wouldn’t be a lot of work, I told myself, just interviews for five women. I should be done in a few days, I thought. After all, I’ve had bigger transcription jobs to do in my life. Once, I had to transform a five-hour interview into an readable article.

But the first interview helped me realise I had underestimated the task. The transcript for a documentary is quite different from a transcript for a journalistic article. You need to write down the nice and meaningful sentences, but also the short and sometimes meaningless words, like “eh,” make record of long sighs…everything.

What’s more, a journalistic interview usually takes a half hour to an hour. Aistė didn’t limit these women so they just talked and talked…

In January, I lived with Alicia, Marisa, Aminat, Keisha, and Božena. My boyfriend knew their life stories as well as I did.

I had no time to think about the amount of work I was doing. Aistė needed the texts as soon as possible, so I sat on my sofa and strummed the keyboard. But it got easier and easier with every single sentence. I found the stories I extremely interesting!

One of the women is Aminat, former Chechen Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Another of the women came to Lithuania before the restoration of independence, after having learned some Lithuanian in a Lithuanian high school in Germany.

A third came to Lithuania to study just a couple of years ago. Voluntarily. She likes Lithuania so much that she is now contemplating starting her own business here.

Love brought a young American actress to Lithuania, even though she didn’t know a single word of Lithuanian and her future boyfriend didn’t speak English.  Isn’t that a Hollywood movie waiting to happen?

Božena’s story probably impressed me most. I have spoken to several Romani people in my life and heard various stories about them. But for the first time, I learned of a woman who started a better life in spite of open bullying and discrimination and helps others do the same.

The stories got more and more interesting with every passing hour until I suddenly understood that I was living these other women’s lives while listening to their interviews. This raw openness probably took a lot of mental energy for them, but it made the documentary more real and interesting.

Those endless hours of interviews are already in the past. I look forward to seeing how Aistė will present the stories. In the meantime, I’m quietly enjoying the feeling of having had a sneak preview 🙂

Eglė