Solidarity according to Women
Director Marta Dzido, Piotr Sliwowski
Countries Poland
Duration 103 min
Synopsis
They had the best years of their lives ahead of them. They were in their twenties and thirties and they chose to rebel instead of settling down and living fairly peaceful lives. Those who they rebelled against tried to destroy their marriages. Threatened them with placing their children in orphanages or that something bad would happen to them if they did not agree to collaborate with the secret service. They were offered relocation to another country on the condition they refrained from activities injurious to the system. The did not refrain from anything. On a Saturday in August 1980, when workers, happy with having been given a raise, ended the strike and wanted to leave the Gdańsk Shipyard, they closed the gates and thus began the strike in solidarity. If it had not been for the initiative of a few determined women, perhaps the Polish history of August ’80 would not have taken place at all. During the Martial Law, when men were imprisoned, women stepped in their shoes. They would print the independent press, they launched and ran an underground radio station. What kept them going was a belief that the revolution was meaningful, hope for a change, a feeling of togetherness. Their objectives were freedom and democracy. Solidarity according to women is a story about some of the brave Polish women whose wisdom, determination and commitment in the opposition movement of the 1980s helped bring about a change of the political reality in Poland. The link between two aspects of the film is Marta Dzido – its co-director and narrator. Born in 1981, being a symbolic daughter of the Solidarity movement, Dzido makes an attempt at locating and reinstating women who were written out of recent Polish history.
They had the best years of their lives ahead of them. They were in their twenties and thirties and they chose to rebel instead of settling down and living fairly peaceful lives. Those who they rebelled against tried to destroy their marriages. Threatened them with placing their children in orphanages or that something bad would happen to them if they did not agree to collaborate with the secret service. They were offered relocation to another country on the condition they refrained from activities injurious to the system. The did not refrain from anything. On a Saturday in August 1980, when workers, happy with having been given a raise, ended the strike and wanted to leave the Gdańsk Shipyard, they closed the gates and thus began the strike in solidarity. If it had not been for the initiative of a few determined women, perhaps the Polish history of August ’80 would not have taken place at all. During the Martial Law, when men were imprisoned, women stepped in their shoes. They would print the independent press, they launched and ran an underground radio station. What kept them going was a belief that the revolution was meaningful, hope for a change, a feeling of togetherness. Their objectives were freedom and democracy. Solidarity according to women is a story about some of the brave Polish women whose wisdom, determination and commitment in the opposition movement of the 1980s helped bring about a change of the political reality in Poland. The link between two aspects of the film is Marta Dzido – its co-director and narrator. Born in 1981, being a symbolic daughter of the Solidarity movement, Dzido makes an attempt at locating and reinstating women who were written out of recent Polish history.