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Zbyszek Bujak

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Negotiations for square brackets
Jan Józef Lipski Social activist
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Well, when Solidarity was formed, I of course joined right at its very beginning. What did I do there? Above all, after some time, I found myself in the leadership of the Mazowsze region, but the most important issue I was involved in at that time was the negotiations with the government and parliamentary commissions about the bill on censorship. Every ruling on censorship is bad, there are no good ones. But they could be better or worse. There was hope here that we could gain a lot, whereas we gained very little but at least it was something. Those square brackets, mainly used by the Catholic press, registers of bills and so on, explaining why part of or an entire article was removed, was something I negotiated, something of that remained. But I had a lot of trouble with that because a member of the PEN Club ought not to participate in negotiating any kind of bill relating to censorship, because the PEN Club is absolutely opposed to any sort of censorship.

No, gdy zaczęła się „Solidarność”, oczywiście się w niej znalazłem i to od samego początku. A co w niej robiłem? No, przede wszystkim po pewnym czasie znalazłem się we władzach Regionu Mazowsze, ale najważniejsza sprawa, którą wtedy robiłem to negocjacje z rządem i z komisjami sejmowymi ustawy o cenzurze. Każda ustawa o cenzurze jest zła, nie ma dobrych. Ale mogą być lepsze albo gorsze. I tutaj była nadzieja, żeby uzyskać bardzo wiele – uzyskało się bardzo mało, ale jednak coś. Te nawiasy kwadratowe, głównie przez prasę katolicką wykorzystywane, dziennik ustaw i tak dalej, tłumaczący dlaczego była konfiskata kawałka artykułu czy całego artykułu, no to jest coś, co ja wynegocjowałem, coś wtedy z tego zostało. Ale miałem duże kłopoty z tym dlatego, że członek PEN Clubu nie powinien właściwie brać udziału w negocjowaniu ustawy żadnej, jeżeli chodzi o cenzurę. Bo PEN Club jest przeciwny absolutnie wszelkiej cenzurze.

Jan Józef Lipski (1926-1991) was one of Poland's best known political activists. He was also a writer and a literary critic. As a soldier in the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), he fought in the Warsaw Uprising. In 1976, following worker protests, he co-founded the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR). His active opposition to Poland's communist authorities led to his arrest and imprisonment on several occasions. In 1987, he re-established and headed the Polish Socialist Party. Two years later, he was elected to the Polish Senate. He died in 1991 while still in office. For his significant work, Lipski was honoured with the Cross of the Valorous (Krzyż Walecznych), posthumously with the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1991) and with the highest Polish decoration, the Order of the White Eagle (2006).

Listeners: Jacek Petrycki Marcel Łoziński

Cinematographer Jacek Petrycki was born in Poznań, Poland in 1948. He has worked extensively in Poland and throughout the world. His credits include, for Agniezka Holland, Provincial Actors (1979), Europe, Europe (1990), Shot in the Heart (2001) and Julie Walking Home (2002), for Krysztof Kieslowski numerous short films including Camera Buff (1980) and No End (1985). Other credits include Journey to the Sun (1998), directed by Jesim Ustaoglu, which won the Golden Camera 300 award at the International Film Camera Festival, Shooters (2000) and The Valley (1999), both directed by Dan Reed, Unforgiving (1993) and Betrayed (1995) by Clive Gordon both of which won the BAFTA for best factual photography. Jacek Petrycki is also a teacher and a filmmaker.

Film director Marcel Łoziński was born in Paris in 1940. He graduated from the Film Directing Department of the National School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź in 1971. In 1994, he was nominated for an American Academy Award and a European Film Academy Award for the documentary, 89 mm from Europe. Since 1995, he has been a member of the American Academy of Motion Picture Art and Science awarding Oscars. He lectured at the FEMIS film school and the School of Polish Culture of Warsaw University. He ran documentary film workshops in Marseilles. Marcel Łoziński currently lectures at Andrzej Wajda’s Master School for Film Directors. He also runs the Dragon Forum, a European documentary film workshop.

Tags: Solidarity, Mazowsze, PEN Club

Duration: 1 minute, 30 seconds

Date story recorded: October 1989

Date story went live: 15 March 2011