An Ordinary Country

The term “surveillance society” came into use relatively recently to refer to the ubiquity of security cameras and facial recognition software. But it could certainly also be applied to Poland from the 1960s to the collapse of Communism in 1989. The secret police recorded hundreds of thousands of hours of film and audio in this period, often using concealed devices. They were watching when ordinary Poles sold gasoline on the illegal market, phoned family members from abroad to ask for foreign currency, or had a romantic rendezvous at a hotel. Other recordings reveal the interrogation of a family man who is pressured to become an informer after being caught with homoerotic magazines, and calls to a number where people could report religious gatherings.

Tomasz Wolski has edited the recordings in sequence without adding commentary or context—the only additional sound is the minimal, highly effective soundtrack ramping up the sense of suppressed tension. The director demonstrates the grossly bureaucratic and banal nature of state control. Casual questions over lunch are punctuated with blatant blackmail in a claustrophobic history lesson from which we can draw very topical conclusions.