Tramwajada

The children race “toward freedom” in the hijacked tram, straight into the neon-lit Silesian night. It could be an unforgettable adventure, but after all, it’s the late 1980s. The harsh, frosty world on the threshold of the new year is already a land of the rejected and the abandoned. Next stop: transformation.

It’s a bit like poetic surrealist cinema, but at the same time a continuation of themes that remained relevant throughout the Polish People’s Republic and beyond—the acute loneliness, especially as experienced by a child. Here, everyone feels like an outcast.

The similarities to music video aesthetics are no coincidence –behind Tramwajada stand the creators of the Polish music video school of the 1990s, Bolesław Pawica and Jarosław Szoda, and the music was composed by Tomek Lipiński. The entire video takes place in settings that often no longer exist today, including the famous “Brutal” in Katowice – the former PKP train station building.

[Olga Drenda]