WATTENBERG AT LARGE: Poland
WATTENBERG AT LARGE: Poland
WETA "WATTENBERG AT LARGE". Program on the changes wrought by the legalization of the SOLIDARITY UNION in Communist POLAND in 1980. A year after this program was made, SOLIDARITY was banned again and forced to work underground as a backlash against non-Communist organizations kicked in until the collapse of the Communist government in 1989. Some archival footage, in B&W, duly noted as such. All footage originally shot on film.
WATTENBERG AT LARGE: Poland
Panning shot of large ships in Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, Poland; stop at MS of Ben Wattenberg introducing show, pointing out the centrality of the yards to Poland's industry. LS/MSs of ships in dock, Polish shiplayers in yards. MS Mr. Wattenberg saying that Polish workers here have not been satisfied that the Communist Party represents them as per Marx's dictum.
WATTENBERG AT LARGE: Poland
Cut to archival B&W film of RIOTS in GDANSK, 1970: tear gas canisters and APCs (called "tanks" here) rolling through streets, police in gas masks, strikers, soldiers on patrol.
WATTENBERG AT LARGE: Poland
Cut to archival B&W footage of GDANSK STRIKE in August, 1980: LS/MSs of crowds of workers staging a sit-in (sit-down) strike; audio of Polish folk-music protest song; MSs striking workers in factory, chained to lockers and laying on ground. B&W shots of Communist leaders negotiating with LECH WALESA; MCU Solidarity (solidarnosc) poster on lamp post; MSs of workers listening to negotiations on loudspeakers; LS/MSs of strikers applauding the results; VO says the agreement was broad and also included acceptance of civil and political liberties; TLSs of SOLIDARITY / SOLIDARNOSC reps handing out copies of the contract to comrades; MS of triumphant LECH WALESA walking through crowd fo strikers.
WATTENBERG AT LARGE: Poland
MSs of Polish men and women recreating on a lake, MSs of Polish industrial workers walking towards factory. MSs intended to evoke a new growth of civil society and individualism in post-1980 Poland: couples in horse-drawn carriages, newborn babies in bassinets, people selling goods at open-airmarket, people recreating in park and on beach, etc. LSs of the Vistula River, towers of Warsaw. Cut to graphic map of Eastern Europe, satellite countries of the USSR highlighted (East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland). LS of Polish countryside, man walking through field. MS man leaning over balcony of apartment in Warsaw. LSs monument honoring Polish war dead and to Jews killed in former Warsaw ghetto of Nazi Holocaust, WWII. LS monument of large wooden crosses honoring Polish war dead. LS of a Soviet Red Army monument in Warsaw depicting a solider helping a wounded soldier, tower with Red Star in BG. TLS of a Warsaw square where a large B&W photo of devastated Warsaw, WWII, is on display. TLS/MSs of a forested monument to Polish officers killed by Soviet troops during WWII (Soviets didn t want an "inattendant" Polish Army). MS of young couple on bank of Vistula River, tilt up to river and the Culture Palace, the Warsaw "Palace of Culture", a gift from Stalin and a remnant of his era.