TV Premiere of 'Swietlik. Altitude Services Cooperative'
"Swietlik. Altitude Services Cooperative" was founded in 1983 by a group of students - activists from the Independent Students’ Union. It was an organisation, which helped them to make some money, what was often quite problematic in socialist economics. It gave young people the notion of business entrepreneurship.
"Swietlik" offered the services of altitude works, mostly painting (e.g. they renovated and painted high residential buildings or the chimneys of the fuel refinery). Workers of the cooperative, mostly students, had no professional experience in such jobs and they were trained by the mountaineers that joined the group. Gathering people from various backgrounds, especially young intellectuals, "Swietlik" also proved to be a cradle for oppositional activists like Maciej Płażynki, who is believed to be a founder of this cooperative. Apart from Płażyński, among the group members was also Donald Tusk (current President of the European Council) and many other politicians who after 1989 used to regularly take the highest functions in Poland. In the 1980s workers of "Swietlik" were closely watched by militia and organised some provocative events, e.g. to the regime's discontent they were responsible for hanging a huge image of St. Mary on one of the buildings during the Pope John Paul II mass in Gdansk in 1987.
In 2008 the European Solidarity Centre (ECS) conducted a number of video recorded interviews (notations) with former members of "Swietlik" cooperative. In notations they speak what it meant for them to be a part of this group and how was it helpful (or not) after 1989. Notations proved to contain very informative, yet amusing material. 25 years after the establishment of "Swietlik" Eureka Media, with support of the European Solidarity Centre and the Polish Film Institute, made a documentary about the cooperative and its fate. The film contained fragments of ECS's Notations, footages from the 1980s and newly recorded original materials. It was directed by Jacek Knopp and had its premiere on the first channel of national television on 2011.
The documentary "Swietlik. Altitude Services Cooperative" was presented on several festivals and received good reviews. It also established ECS's position in the documentary film-making environment and prompt the institution to create some more films, which has been one og its goals ever since.
Author(s) of this page
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Tołłoczko-Suchańska, Barbara
Last edited on: 2017-11-21 17:29:40