Letila Fong

“I’m from Suva, Fiji. I grew up in Ba, in the west, and we moved to Suva in 1990 when I was ten. I work at the University of the South Pacific in the Centre for Flexible Learning. I’m an electronic publisher.

I just wanted to do a short video about my daughter from when she was small, and some of the things that I was going through with her. Because she’s important to me!

I enjoyed the whole workshop itself, the three days. The difficult thing I found was to come up with the story idea … but once the idea was there, how I wanted it to go, then it became easy, the flow was just there. But the technical bit, putting the movie together it was all right, it wasn’t difficult.”

Olivia

I hear her voice snap, ‘I have my own money, so I can buy what I want!’ This hits me, hurts a little. I always knew it was coming – the age when parts of her life would close off to me.

“It was quite personal, my story, it was about my daughter and the struggle that I was going through with her. At first I was a bit nervous but as the story screened, I felt comfortable. It was fine because I guess my colleagues, they also went through similar struggles. We shared stories even after the workshop.

I think [digital stories] should be told and shared because in a way it lets others know what people are going through, and you get a better understanding. But it’s good to have short stories, not long ones like a movie. I’d do another one.”