People from an Empty Zone

Poland1957documentary15'Pokaz specjalny (2018)

„People from an Empty Zone” represents nothing of a crime newsreel, nor a „wanted” circular, nor a warning poster. The protagonists in the film, young people from the Praga Discrict in Warsaw, are presented with care and sympathy, which is questions and quoting the protagonist’s remarks instead. At the beginning the text can be seen: “The film is a story about a group of young people we got to know. The people we present are similar to the majority of boys and girls of their age. The film is as if the synthesis of our observations. The aim is to signal a problem rooted deeply in the life of our society. Producers.” Karabasz and Slesicki tried to abandon staging individual scenes in favour of observing events and, above all, behaviors, moods and states of mind of their protagonists. Thus the first shots of the film, taken in the street through the car window, are already full of authenticity hardly present in the arranged situations of other film in series. What was created was the most equivocal image of the characters of all “black series” films. The protagonists are young inhabitants of the Praga Discrict whom Karabasz and Slesicki met while shooting “Where the Devil Says Goodnight”. Many years later these people reported at the WFD (Documentary Film Studio). Old vagrants from the Praga alleys had become respectable and often well-off middle-class people. With their memories of the film which captured and preserved some truth about them were good. Together with Brzozowski and Bossak’s “Warsaw, ‘56” and Jan Łomnicki’s “The House of Old Women”, “People from an Empty Zone” was awared a prize at the First Polish Documentary Film Festival held in Warsaw in April 1958. A famous 2000 documentary by Grzegorz Pack, “I’m Bad”, the film based most of All on the videos taken on the director’s suggestion by kids and youngsters of the Warsaw Praga, was considered a part reference to „People from an Empty Zone”.