Children of Solidarnosc

Lack of work on my part this week. Mainly due to overwork at the day job and volunteering at the Document Human Rights Film Festival at the CCA.

I did projection of two films tonight! One called Beslan: The Right To Live, which was a rather muddled film about the aftermath of the terrorist takeover of a school in the town of Beslan in southern Russia, and a fantastic film called Children of Solidarnosc.

The latter was a wonderfully assured, confident, incisive, thought-provoking (I could go on) piece following the children of leaders of the Solidarity movement in Poland. It was a cross sectional view of modern Poland. It talked to a young teacher whose father wrote a wonderfully tender song for her when she was one, explaining why her dad was away all the time and how he hoped to bring about a better world for his little girl. The song became an anthem for the workers but had less impact at home, and she admits feeling bitterness towards her father. In a discussion round the dinner table she talks of the struggles for her generation in a capitalist society. Her parents are a little sceptical, listing the freedoms young people now enjoy. She finds life just as hard she says. At home she and her boyfriend bone up on Ireland whilst packing their possessions into boxes. They plan to live and work there for a few years in an attempt to save up money. "This is our last chance before we have children," they say.

We also met Lukasz, a media analyst in Warsaw who heads home every two weeks to his mother's farm and his 8 brothers and sisters. He worries about what will happen to the farm and his mother, and seems to find the balance between his two lives a hard one to achieve. He says people are leaving Poland and he himself went to the US and England, but "this is where my life is".

Artur, meanwhile, has met a girl named Ana and they are busy planning and building (!!!) their house. He works in the same shipyards his father did and whilst he seems a cheery fellow he moans at the unfair ratio of responsibility to salary.

All of the young people in this film share the problems most young people in the West have. Jobs, money, family, the usual stuff. What sets them apart is the acute realisation they all have that it could've been different, and was for their parents. The one problem they have that Westerners don't is to reconcile the legacy of communism and their parents part in its downfall with their new lives.