Secret Tapes

In the late sixties, the opposition against the communist government in Poland grew. The secret service had more and more trouble smothering the flaring protests. One of the methods they used was capturing activists and opposition leaders on film. Between 1966 and 1985, countless films were shot, most of which were destroyed with the collapse of the communist regime. This film consists of extracts that have been preserved in one way or another. Those responsible for the technical realisation of the films, including a cameraman and an editor, comment on the images in voice-over. They explain how they set about the job. They shot from a specially rented flat or a car, and a co-worker hid a camera in a pram with her son. The footage shows disturbances in the street, meetings, a hunger strike and the case of a man who set himself on fire in protest against the intervention by the Warsaw Pact in 1968. These are the ghastly testimonies from a black period in the history of Poland, a time when public order was maintained with all possible means and treachery and violence were rife.