Polish culture

Agnieszka Holland is one of Poland's most celebrated filmmakers. She started her career in the early 1970s, when her film scripts were scrutinized line-by-line by the communist party censors. Some subjects were completely off limits, she said.

"I knew, of course, that several subjects were impossible to touch," Holland said. It was impossible to say anything negative about the Soviet Union or about a controversial part of Polish history.

"But in some way, you can tell plenty of things without touching those subjects," she said.

Extreme censorship

Janusz Glowacki, one of the country's best-known playwrights, said he can now write whatever he likes. He is currently rehearsing a play at Warsaw's Ateneum theater about the life of the Russian poet, Sergei Yesenin.

In 1970, Glowacki co-wrote the screenplay for what many consider to be the Polish cult movie, "rejs." The film is a comedy, which uses allegory to highlight life under the communist system.

In one scene, a river boat passenger has a sausage stolen from his plate by an angler on the bank. The passenger yells, 'Who is this thief who has stolen my meat?'

"The censor asked for this scene to be cut," Glowacki said. When asked why, he said, 'Don't play the fool! We know perfectly well who the chandler and thief are and it's a direct allusion to the shortage of meat in our stores and must be cut.'

Time helped

Censorship also affected musicians: what lyrics they could write, where they could play or record. In 1982, the influential punk rock band Brygada Kryzys was invited to test a new state-owned recording studio. Instead of testing, they used the time to record their debut self-titled album, said Tomasz Lipinski, the singer and guitarist. It is now regarded as a classic of Polish punk rock music.

"Until 1984, I didn't have my own guitar, so for five years I played on other people's instruments because I couldn't afford one," Lipinski said. "But I miss those days of this freedom actually. It's funny, but in a way we were freer than we are now."

According to Lipinski, musicians have to think much more about making money today.

"While then, this aspect just didn't exist and it was fantastic," he said. "It was fantastic for our growth and for our development. And it was fantastic for art, because we had a lot of time to play."

More pressure from Hollywood

It's not only Lipinski who misses some things about those days. Agnieszka Holland left Poland just before martial law was declared in 1981, when the communist authorities tried to crush the opposition Solidarity movement.

She went on to have a successful career in western Europe and Hollywood. But there, she encountered new types of constraints, she said.

"After some years in the western cinema, I realized that I never have been as free artistically as I was in communist Poland," Holland said. "In communist Poland, no one wanted me to make a movie which will be very commercial."

In fact, the opposite was the case.

"The authorities were very glad if no one came to the movie," she said. "When I started to work abroad, it was with much more pressure from distributors, producers, the networks, etcetera."

As a young woman, Holland spent six weeks in prison for opposing the system. She and these other artists don't want to see communism return, of course. Now they have the thing that many of them fought for: freedom. They may have lost a certain sense of security they had under the communist system but now at least they are not threatened by jail.

Author: Adam Easton (sac)
Editor: Rob Turner