The senior ethnographer PhDr. Bozena Filová, CSc., Corresponding Member of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (born in 1926), had been the Director of the Ethnographic Institute SAS (today the Institute of Ethnology SAS) in Bratislava during the period 1958-1989. The interview brings her memories and evaluation of the important moments of the Institute history as well as professional and subjective arguments concerning development and trends of ethnography as an academic discipline in Slovakia. It reveals also social and political aspects of scientific work and relationships in the academic working place.