MABOU MINES PGM 4: FAR FROM POLAND

Directed by Jill Godmilow

1984 / 110min

Godmilow’s agit-prop documentary/fiction hybrid film about the Polish Solidarity movement, the first successful independent labor union to emerge in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, was also her first collaboration with Mabou Mines. Denied a travel visa by the Polish government, Godmilow stays home and goes Brechtian, recreating actual interviews with Solidarity leader Anna Walentynowicz in a New York loft with Ruth Maleczech in the lead role. The film also stars Honora Fergusson as a reporter, Bill Raymond as a government censor, David Warrilow as the voice of the Polish dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski, and Mark Margolis (PI) as a shipyard worker. FAR FROM POLAND is a powerful portrait of resistance suddenly springing up in a time of despair, as well as a self-reflexive meditation on the impossibility of understanding a revolution an ocean away. “A groundbreaking work in the history of experimental documentary cinema.” –MUSEUM OF MODERN ART IN WARSAW