Short Working Day + Factory

Programme

• Introduction

  With introduction (in English) by cultural historian Iwona Guść. She studied Dutch Studies at the University of Wrocław (Poland) and subsequently obtained her PhD on the history of Polish film and censorship at the University of Groningen. She now works as a history teacher at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

• Factory (Krzysztof Kieślowski, PL 1971, 17')

  An average working day at the Ursus tractor factory. The factory can’t make its production quota because of shortages of just about everything: equipment, parts, et cetera. People shuffle paperwork, apply for permits, hold countless meetings, but there seems to be no way out of this vicious circle of misunderstandings and bureaucracy – the left hand has no idea what the right is doing. As one of the managers says: “The bureaucracy in this country resists every solution”. Nevertheless, the workers have to achieve their quota.

• Short Working Day (Krzysztof Kieślowski, PL 1981, 73')

  A dramatization of the workers’ protests in June 1976 in Radom, seen from the perspective of the local Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party. The Party Secretary is stuck in the headquarters as a furious mob assemble outside to protest against huge increases in food prices imposed by the government. Produced in 1981, this film was only given a commercial release in 1996.