Sunday Winter Films: Black Thursday 105 min

This is a classic ‘realist’ film structure in Poland, that clearly demonstrates the large-scale operations of society and how they then filtered down to impact upon the everyday Polish working man and woman.

Black Thursday looks to construct a multi-layered examination of the events of the winter of 1970 in the Trójmiasto area. In the December of 1970 protests were sparked by a sudden increase in prices of food and other everyday life items. Despite the fact that many of the protesters were mostly social and economical based rather than political, the crushed riots had invigorated the dormant political activity of Polish society.

As a result of riots, brutally put down by the Polish People’s Army,  42 people were killed  and over 1,000 wounded.