How to Live

Filmed in home-movie style and set to irrepressibly happy songs, this documentary by Marcel Lozinski captures everyday life at a Polish Socialist Youth summer camp, where floundering party officials instill newlyweds with approved values. Although not all the officials themselves are that well grounded ideologically, they do their best to mold the students into good citizens of the communist utopia. They rehearse songs, march, paint slogans on banners and play role-playing games in which the participants learn how to behave with visitors. The climax of this summer residency is a contest to find the most exemplary couple. How to Live is at times downright hilarious. It is almost impossible to believe that this film was shot only eight years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, which marked the end of the communist era. On the other hand, the tests the contestants have to do – including a party jargon quiz – bring to mind the citizenship courses that immigrants to Western European countries are required to take. Once we have pierced the ridiculous formality of Comrade Camp Leader and his helpers, what comes to the fore are the emotions of those who want to fit the ideological mold, and those who do not. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)