Films that gave us boldness : East European documentaries screened in Poland (1987-1993) as reflected in the film press of the time

"Films from East" signalling the political breakdown in the middle of the 1980s (the Gorbachev era) were welcomed in the official circulation system. The films were screened not only in festival cinemas, but on TV as well, and were discussed in newspapers and magazines. Soviet films were especially important because they were able to carry new information about the changes taking place in Eastern Europe. If independent ideas appeared in a Polish film, it could be banned from screening, as censorship was sensitive to works “threatening socialism” and “disturbing the alliance”. The only country in our part of Europe which did not need to be afraid of “disturbing the alliance” was the Soviet Union. We can distinguish three groups of such documentaries: analyses of social life (for example: Is It Easy to be Young? by Yuris Podnieks, Borderline by Tatiana Skabard), films about contemporary threats, provoked by the Chernobyl disaster (An Unpublished Album by Victor Kripchenko and Volodymyr Taranchenko, Chernobyl the Chronicle of Difficult Weeks by Volodymyr Shevchenko) and documentaries “squaring accounts” with history, filling in so-called “blank spots” (Termination of an Agreement by Murat Mamedov, Solovki Power by Marina Goldovskaya).