Interview with Stella Domaleski
Stella Domaleski is not only my great grandmother, but one of the most inspiring individuals I have ever known. In 1916, Stella was born into a family of Polish immigrants and had ten brothers and sisters. Stella was asked to leave school before the end of fifth grade to begin work as a housekeeper to help support her family. When interviewed, Stella described the hardships of growing up in poverty as she spent most of her time walking barefoot, reserving one pair of shoes to wear to church on Sundays. Her father, Dominic, abandoned her family when Stella was young and started a life with another woman with whom he fathered nine children. After growing up and meeting her first husband, Stella moved away from home briefly only to be betrayed by her “womanizing” husband and forced to move back home with her mother. Spending most of her life working, from cleaning to making toothpaste tubes in a factory assembly line, Stella’s life was not an easy one. She explains that it wasn’t until she met Leo, her second husband that things began to look up for her. Never being one to take anything for granted, Stella looks back on her life of work seeing the adversity that came with it as a tool that allowed her to “build herself up.”
For these reasons, I decided to cut together an interview of Stella sharing some of her life stories. This interview was taken just a few months before she passed away at the age of 97 years old. The poor quality of the image is a result of the rendering process of this footage and the original large file size. The interview was conducted with a series of conversational questioning by myself, but in the aim to allow the interview to flow and for Stella’s voice to resonate, I chose to cut out the audio of the questions being asked. The interview is done in a one-on-one fashion in two different locations. It is primarily a profile interview, with only a few moments of Stella looking directly at the camera. Without access to any lighting equipment, the setting is lit practically. In the first location, Stella is lit from the side by lamplight, which is fairly direct. The second location is perhaps more flat compositionally as there is more fill light and less dimension to the background. Both locations are areas in Stella’s personal home where she felt most comfortable.
The audio was recorded through use of the on-board camera microphone due to limited equipment resources. The camera used was a Canon EOS 400D.
Beginning with a brief exposition on screen, scrolling text reveals some information about Stella, her life, and the context of the interview. This is to make the viewing more relevant to an audience who did not know her personally.
There was no need for a pre-interview, and questions were inspired by my brief prior knowledge of Stella’s life. I was able to bring up topics to jog her memory and guide her into revealing more information about her life.
The raw footage of the interview contains over an hour of footage. The final short cut together selected the most poignant moments of the interview conversation and put them in a loosely chronological sequence in order to enhance viewer clarity and emphasis aspects of Stella’s life. Stella shares her life from childhood, through work, into her first marriage, dating again after her divorce, and finally ending with her happy marriage to her second husband, Leo. No information was manipulated, and the feelings Stella had and the manner in which she depicted her life was carefully left in tact through the editing process.
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact style of this interview. Perhaps the best definition would be as a participatory documentary because although you do not hear my voice asking the questions, I am the one leading the topics and guiding Stella’s answers for the purpose of capturing a sample of her life. Additionally, as aforementioned, this interview took shape upon editing where again, I was manipulating the information to convey a story. Throughout the process, my influence remained behind-the-scenes, but remained highly influential in the development of the project and the messages the audience will receive.
Stella’s passing soon after this interview was conducted makes it something more important that I ever intended. It is now a memoir of sorts, and is made up of information that I otherwise would not have in any permanent form. This interview has developed value in a way that is truly special. Stella’s life has a substance through the images and audio captured that lives on beyond the limitations of human memory, and beyond the lives of those who knew her directly. Now, even those who never had the opportunity to know her can achieve a brief glimpse into her incredible life and perhaps achieve some understanding of what an inspiration she was throughout her time.