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Friday, September 28, 2001
Contact: Peter Bailley
news@knox.edu
309-341-7715
For three years, from 1998 until earlier this year, a film crew followed Aisha Nurse, recording some 300 hours of her life in Oak Park, Illinois — with family and friends, good times and rough ones. The result — a two-hour-long show "5 Girls" will be broadcast on Tuesday, Oct. 2 (9 p.m. EDT), as part of the "POV" series on Public Broadcasting System.
The program followed Nurse, a first-year student at Knox College in Galesburg, and four other Chicago-area teen-age girls; Nurse was 15 and a sophomore at St. Joseph's High School when the filming began. Nurse says she got into the film through a recommendation from her dance teacher. "I did it just to try something new."
Nurse's high school, an all-girl's school in River Forest, Illinois, declined to allow filming on campus, unlike the schools of the four other girls featured in the program. "The film had to focus more on other parts of my life, my friends and family," Nurse says. "There were no situations that were hidden. If you argued with your parents, it's shown."
Nurse says she was given an opportunity to make cuts in her part of the program, but she didn't. "There are things I wanted to see more of, like more footage with my mother," she says, but there weren't any scenes that she asked them to remove.
"My father is very protective," she says, and that became a central theme for her part of the program. "People have asked me, 'How did you deal with your dad? He's so controlling.' But he actually likes the program, and he's changed since it was made. Also, being at Knox has helped me realize a lot about him and why he was protective."
Even though the period covered by the filming included the separation of her parents, Nurse says that watching the program "made me feel like my issues and problems were not as big as what the other girls had to deal with." One is from a Vietnamese immigrant family; one didn't live with either parent; another's parents were both physicians with extremely high expectations; and one is bisexual and clashed with her parents over her sexual orientation.
Nurse says she didn't meet the other four girls until the premiere in August of the completed film. "When we saw each other, we felt like we knew each other, even though it was the first time we were together."
"It was a good experience, but I don't think I'd do it again," she says. "Eventually it got annoying. The producer would call on Monday, asking what I would be doing on Saturday. I didn't plan that far ahead." By the time it was over, she says, "I don't think I could have done it much longer."
Nurse also says she doesn't intend to watch the broadcast on Oct. 2. "I've seen it enough," she says. Nurse viewed an edited version of the program, then attended a premiere of the completed show in August, just before coming to Knox. She plans to major in psychology and business.
Related Pages
More about 5 Girls
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