Pierwsze lata

On director of the Czech state film Lubomir Linhart's initiative, Ivens made this film about the problems met by the young socialist republics of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Poland in the post-war reconstruction period. The film was planned as a quadripartite project, but due to the dispute between Moscow and Belgrade, the Yugoslavian episode was not included in the film. The Bulgarian episode was filmed in the village of Radilovo, where tobacco is the main product, which makes its inhabitants dependent on rain. By regional planning and irrigation systems this dependence should be side-stepped. The Czech episode is about Czech nationalism since Jan Hus, and reconstructs the connection between Czech industry and German fascism. A new social and economic order has to be established. The episode ends with a speech on the first Five-Year Plan. In the Polish episode a music-teacher is followed who leaves the destroyed city of Warsaw and moves to Silesia which was added to Poland after the war. There, she finds work in a steelworks and gradually settles down. Re-preserved from a nitrate copy of the NFM.