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Behind the Iron Gate

Behind the Iron Gate
/6
    • Behind the Iron Gate
    • Za Żelazną Bramą
    • Hinter dem Eisernen Tor
  • 2009
  • video, color
  • 55min
“Za Żelazną Bramą” portrays everyday life in a communist-era housing estate built between 1965 and 1972 in the center of Warsaw, on the ruins of the so-called Small Ghetto, by a team of architects. The 19 blocks, each of them 16 stories high, are based on modern rational principles. They were occupied by workers, functionaries, academics and the Warsaw intelligentsia. In the 1970s, this housing estate was considered a symbol of Polish socialist prosperity and technological progress. Today, its small apartments are regarded by many as being both substandard and an unpleasant reminder of the communist era. Of today's 25.000 inhabitants, many are students, pensioners or childless couples; however, growing Vietnamese and Jewish communities have likewise moved in. Since 1989, a number of postmodern apartment buildings, office towers and hotels have been built in between the blocks, destroying green areas and the original layout of the housing estate. While one of the architects discusses the influence of communist bureaucracy and housing norms (which, for example, restricted the size of living spaces to 11 square meters per person), tenants and shopkeepers talk about the functionality of the block architecture and its common spaces in their daily lives, preconceptions about run-down facilities and inadequate apartment design, noise pollution from neighbors and construction sites, social relations in the blocks (in particular prejudices against and/or integration of the Vietnamese and Jewish communities), and how life and business have changed during the past few decades—running from communist rule to the arrival of capitalism. Conversations with the inhabitants are juxtaposed with footage of daily life in and around the blocks—in the apartments, the hallways, the lobbies, the parking lots, the playgrounds and the schools.” H.H.