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Work

Stichting Film en Wetenschap / Martin Schouten
 
Number of interviews: 3
Accessibility: for research purposes
Transcripts: yes
Period of interviews: 1976-1977

Remarks:

The collection has not yet been digitized and therefore cannot be viewed directly at Sound & Vision. Digitization, however, can be requested through Sound & Vision.

Medium: 2 audiotapes and 3 cassette tapes
 

In the interviews, Smit and Twisk talk about their work and their experience of it. The interviews were conducted on behalf of a series of articles by Martin Schouten in the Haagse Post in which people talk about their experience of work. Later, most of these pieces were collected, in modified form, in Schouten’s book Work. Fifty People about what they actually do for a living and how they feel about it.

Incidentally, several people appear in the book under pseudonyms.

 

Jan Smit is a house painter with the Buildings Department of Netherlands Railways. He recounts his experiences at work in a sometimes hilarious manner. Kees Twisk (74), a retired ‘greenkeeper’, talks about maintaining the golf courses in Zandvoort, which he did all his life. The interview with Faber was not conducted directly in the context of the above-mentioned topic but for the benefit of a project on people living on the financial minimum. The results of this were also supposed to be contained in a book.
However, it is unclear whether this ever materialised.

 

Interviewees:

  • Jan Smit
  • Kees Twisk
  • Mr Faber

Werk. Vijftig mensen over wat ze nou eigenlijk doen voor de kost en hoe ze daarover denken.

Martin Schouten

Amsterdam 1978, De Arbeiderspers, Interviewbundel.

ISBN: 9029544554

In Werk Haagse Post journalist Martin Schouten interviews 50 people about what they actually do for a living and how they feel about it. For a year, Schouten listened to people talk about their work: about profession, their boss, their colleagues, their life – what they imagined it would be like and how it turned out. From the barge master (‘the romance has sailed away’) to the real estate agent (‘your private life gets a bit involved, three years ago I got divorced’). He has strolled across a golf course with the man in charge of keeping the grass green (greenkeeper), sat hoisting lager with a postman (‘they sometimes think it’s some imbibing professionie’) and sagged with the bouncer of a night pub. In short: everyday working life. Wonderful.