Tomasz Wolski: 1970

Wolski is one of the excellent documentary film directors from Poland, together with Pawel Lozinski and Wojciech Staron and many many others. I say so from having seen ”Ordinary Country” (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4759/and now ”1970”.

Poland has a long tradition for documentaries and today there is – seen from outside – what I would call ”a documentary culture” that brings forward new talents, based on film schools, festivals, training initiatives, a film institute and broadcasters. Even if I don’t know how much political influence is executed from the latter nowadays?

I watched Wolski’s ”1970” the other day and was impressed by its originality in telling the story about the incidents in December 1970, where protests were performed strongly from citizens, who went to the streets due to extraordinary rise in prices for food and other everyday necessities, or on strike as did the workers at the shipyard cities up North. As in ”Ordinary Country”, Wolski uses archive – visual and oral, here recordings of tapes, authentic conversations by high‑ranking communist officials, in some dark rooms, a crisis group put together to lead a brutal battle against the demonstrators. The scoop is that the director has invited puppet maker Robert Sowa to make micro scale figurines of the group members to accompany the recordings. It works perfectly to have the story be dramatic, told by the communists and their voices in the dark rooms, and with the archive footage being quite strong; people were killed during the few days the rebellion lasted before it was knocked down.

To read more about the film go to

https://www.krakowfilmfestival.pl/en/new-issue-of-focus-on-poland/

the magazine Focus on Poland, where you will find a well illustrated case article on the film and its use of animation of the small puppets, size 20-28 cm. On how they were made etc. etc.

Focus on Poland is published by Krakow Film Foundation and with competence edited by two fine ladies, who are everywhere to promote Polish documentaries and animation films and who of course are closely linked to Krakow Film Festival: Barbara Orlicz-Szczyputa and Katarzyna Wilk.

Poland, 70 mins., 2021