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RETURN TO Ewa Kruk Season

Shot in the summer in the popular seaside resort of Świnoujście, this documentary opens with ships in the sea against the horizon. The camera moves to a busy beach, where crowds of holiday-makers enjoy their time in the sun. The carefree atmosphere is only disrupted by an announcement from the speakers on the pier, with a warning against thieves—an early sign of the forthcoming exploration of corruption among those who work for the tourists.

Season

  • Sezon
  • 1971
  • dir. Ewa Kruk
  • 19 min 3 sec

Shot in the summer in the popular seaside resort of Świnoujście, this documentary opens with ships in the sea against the horizon. The camera moves to a busy beach, where crowds of holiday-makers enjoy their time in the sun. The carefree atmosphere is only disrupted by an announcement from the speakers on the pier, with a warning against thieves—an early sign of the forthcoming exploration of corruption among those who work for the tourists.

We see a customer in a bar who bumps into the waitress to hear her crude reaction: ‘What do you want from me?’ As Kruk offers more observational shots from the bar, we start hearing a female off-screen voice: ‘You have to work hard… You need to be brave to cheat’.  After a short glance at an argument between one of the waitresses and yet another customer who fight over money, we move to the young waitress’s bedroom.

This sequence allows the viewer to get more acquainted with the seasonal female workers, whom the camera accompanies as they smoke, chat and try on new clothes.

It soon becomes apparent that the only way for these women to meet their financial needs is to cheat their drunk clients, so we hear them instructing each other how to write receipts to cover for the missing cash. Bold and confident they express no moral hesitation.

Before the camera returns to the waitresses, it scans the town in search of eccentricities. We observe a monkey and a dog running after tourists to steal their bag.

When we meet the waitresses again, Kruk follows a group of them as they go through their night shift in a crowded restaurant, mostly serving foreign clients.

Although their hands are busy, they still find the time to interact with the male customers, despite the fact they don’t know any foreign languages. If we are aware the waitress cheat the clients, that is never caught on camera; we only witness the smiles they send each other.

After a cheerful, wild party sequence at the restaurant, we observe the town’s streets in the morning, where the police pick up the last drunk and the cleaners try to tidy the mess from the night before.

We return to the waitresses’ bedroom to find their suitcases packed. As they count their cash, they express disappointment with their seasonal earnings. A melancholic song played by a local band marks the end of the holiday season.

Through a window, we see an empty beach. Kruk cuts to a sand sculpture of a woman with her head bowed down, as if in a gesture of discomfort or embarrassment. A closing tracking shot shows the distant pier. Both the bright holiday-makers and the women who cheated them to prop up their low wages are now gone.

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