Les Premières Années
( Pierwsze Lata )

Joris Ivens
1947 - 99 min - 35 mm - Noir & Blanc - Tchécoslovaquie, Bulgarie, Pologne

Originally intended as a four part film on the new democracies in Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Czechoslowakia, Yugoslavia and Poland. But since Tito went into another direction than the Soviet authorities wanted, the part on Yugoslavia was skipped. The First Years is a film on the build-up of three socialist states, after World War II. In the Bulgarian part irrigation works make the people less dependent on rain. The Czech tells us about Jan Hus and Czech nationalism and the instauration of a new social and economic order after the war. In the Polish episode we follow a woman who leaves devastated Warsaw to build up a new existence in the west of Poland, working in a steel factory. All three episodes breathe the optimism of the socialist promise, and sketch the road of transformation from a pre-war capitalist country into a new socialist democracy.