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. All footage originally shot on film.
WATTENBERG AT LARGE: Poland
Ben Wattenberg interviews a Polish Communist Party spokesman, who says that Solidarity is going too far in being confrontational and that is a reason why the communist economy isn't working efficiently, that strikes are costly lost labor; he denies that socialism is inherently flawed, the problem is that there was never a perfect removal of dependence on Western Capitalism in the economy; they have a good-natured debate over this.
WATTENBERG AT LARGE: Poland
TLS/MSs of Poles waiting in food lines in downtown Warsaw. MSs of empty market shelves and meat coolers. TLS/MSs of Polish farmland, farmers tending fields; VO discusses Poland's deficit in food production; CU tomatoes in crate; MS/CUs of farmer's market, people selling produce from their private plots (tomatoes, cauliflower, strawberries, and meat); VO discusses farmers' resentment of collectivization of agriculture and state farms; MSs of farmer & his family riding in a horse wagon at market, then on country road. Panning LS of flat field in Central Poland; MSs of wheat stalks in field.
WATTENBERG AT LARGE: Poland
MS of adorable boy following his father, a farmer, as he gets into a car; MS farmer driving his small car to a meeting of Rural Solidarity (Agricultural Worker's Union), the farmer's branch of the trade union. MS/CUs of meeting, people wearing "SOLIDARNOSC" t-shirts and sitting under large banners with the red Union lettering. Ben Wattenberg interviews the farm unionist inside a greenhouse; unionist says that private farmers need to be able to get tractors and equipment for Poland to be self-sufficient in food, that Communist farm policy was inefficient, drove farmers out of the country, and used harmful price controls. MSs woman & child working in greenhouse, tending to crops. Mr. Wattenberg interviews a senior Solidarity official about the agricultural problems and bad economy in Poland; he says the problem is complex, discusses the crisis of authority that Solidarity poses to the alleged "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" that Communism claimed to be.