BLR, DE 1992 | Director: Jurij Chascewatskij | Script: Ella Milova, Irina Pismennaja | Camera: Semjon Friedland | Editor: Vera Antipowa | Sound: Grigori Komel, Wassilij Schitikow | Assistant Directors: Bronislawa Loban, Marina Pawlowa | Production Lead: Michaeil Schinkewitsch, Hildegard Westbeld | Editorial department: Barbara Denz | Producers: Tatjana Studio Minsk, ABC-Studio, Bremer Institut Film/Fernsehen Produktionsgesellschaft mbH (BIFF, Bremen) | colour + b/w | 35mm | 74 min | russ. OV with german SUB

"Do you have children?" Ella Milova and Irina Pismennaja ask a woman worker somewhere in the former Soviet Union, as she skins a cow. Of course she does. The camera focuses on the pools of blood on the floor. The following sequences lead into a delivery room, interspersed with working and birthing conditions in a Tajik cotton region: women in the former Soviet Union. [...] Sixty per cent of all hard (unskilled) physical labour is done by women – for instance in road construction, where the most important safety measure is to wear orange vests so they’re clearly visible. These vests provide the film with its title [...]. Though they work to the point of exhaustion, the women still fare very badly. Their most frequent comment is “We’ve gotten used to it.”
The double burden of women in formerly socialist countries is well documented. Milova and Pismennaja report on it because their female friends in the west are a bit dense. The filmmakers say that their West German colleagues’ most frequent question is “Why can’t you talk about love?” Their film provides the answer: “We wish we had your worries.”
(Friederike Freier, taz, 19 February 1993)

A film letter about women’s work, equality, and also love, written in the former Soviet Union to German colleague Helke Sander. "You know, the longer we flew, drove and made films, the more I was convinced you were right: men created this world for themselves." (Edition Salzgeber)