March 16th 2007

Screening Day

PREMEIRE NIGHT: At the Kargadoor in Utrecht.

It was a great night; except that P, A and F weren't there to enjoy the fruit of thier labor. It was quite an emotional night for us; realising the project was over. We didn't say goodbye to anyone though. The other incident that made it really sad and overwhelming for us was when we found out that R. and F. had gotton separated. Apparently they decided that F. had too many problems and couldn't handle the stress of raising a son so they put R. in a foster home with a Dutch family!!!!! I am still having nightmares about it!!! But we put on a good, brave and happy face for the night. All the women and the kids came all dressed up and the director of the house was there as well. They loved watching themselves on a big screen and there was lots of laughter and happiness in the room.

March 2007

Days after: Editing Days

Me and Vivian have been working hard on the editing. I am learning how to work on a MAC.thanks to Viv and Sandberg who only supplied us with macintoshes :) We want the women to be involved in the editing but they dont seem to be too interested so we just stopped by at the house twice and showed them what we've done. They love it and say its in line with thier vision; M and A asked for a couple of changes but they overall they were very impressed with it. Specially the children get wild when they see themselves and thier mothers on screen. We will be having a Screening Day this Friday; March 16th; evening at the Kargadoor in Utrecht. Some of the videos have been a real challenge but the end product is beautiful. We have made two versions of the videos; a normal version and a 1 minute version.
We were at the house on March 11th to show the women the final product and to add Titles and names. We found out a disturing news that F. and R. had gotton kicked out of the house because F. had gotton violent with one of the other women. Its very distressing to hear this. Hope she is ok wherever she is.

Feb. 25 2007

Day 10: Sound Studio

Picked up the women at Central Station and took them to STIEM to record them singing. They were all dressed in thier best clothes, makeup etc. It was a nice way for them to have a day out and be productive. They all took turns to sing and record and then we all went for dinner at Kismet. It was a fantastic day since this was the first time we socialised with the women outside of work. Getting to know them on a much more personal level. R. threw a serious fit at the end of the night and i had to sit with him and F and try to calm the situation. Thanks to Martin Travers and to Taku aka. dj sniff for thier support.

Pooja filming, F. singing a Berber song and Taku the sound engineer.

Pooja and Martin picked the women up at Centraal Station and herded them onto the metro to get to STEIM. The women had an encounter on the train from Utrecht that left them a bit worked up - they were asked to move upstairs because they were sitting in the supposedly "silent" section of the train. After getting settled in, we first had M. in the studio recording 3 songs in Russian. Afterwards, F. came in and sang 4 different songs in Arabic. A. already had in mind which song to sing in Portuguese for her video - so we did 3 takes of the same song, which sounded very happy - but according to A. was a sad song about disillusionment. At the very end we had F.'s son R. come in and sing some kid's songs in Dutch and he turned bright red when we played it back for him. We headed to the Pijp for a wonderful dinner at Kismet where we all relaxed with drinks and food. Overall a nice evening, but R. threw a fit towards the end and could not be consoled.
* Thank you to STEIM for their recording studio space and to Taku a.k.a. dj sniff for his audio engineering skills.

A. recording her song in the STEIM studios and A. listening to her track recorded by Taku.