In October 2009 the screening of the “Welcome to Life” documentary about the Amway direct sale retailer and the company's brainwashing procedures was blocked by the Telewizja Polska S.A., which withdrew the viewing rights from the Warsaw Film Festival. The screenings had been planned since August 2009 when the film producer, Jacek Gwizdała submitted the film and informed about new circumstances in the legal proceedings concerning the film since 1997.

The Festival director, Stefan Laudyn, claims that after the information about the screenings of “Welcome to Life” at the 25th Warsaw Film Festival had appearded in media the people responsible for suing the film director and producer on numerous occasions sent out the letters to, among others, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, President of Warsaw, Polish Film Institute, TVP SA, EU Agency in Poland, and the Festival sponsors, in which they claimed that the screening of the documentary would be a violation of a court ban.

Stefan Laudyn hopes this incident would highlight the problem of restraining freedom of speech and artistic expression.

In 1997 film director Henryk Dederko and producers: TVP SA and Contra Studio in Łódź were taken to court in two seperate trials by the US-based direct retailer Amway and its Poland-based representatives, the charges being slandering and spreading false information about the corporation. The case of the Amway Polish representatives led to a ban on screening the film in Poland. This case was terminated in September 2009, which allowed the Festival organizers to put the film on their programme. Yet, the screening was cancelled at the last moment by TVP S.A. The Telewizja Polska withdrew their viewing rights when the Amway lawyers threatened to sue the Television to pay compensation for screening the film.

Jacek Gwizdała, Contra Studio, claims this is preventive censorship.

The film's copyrights belong to TVP S.A. Both Contra Studio and Amway have attempted to buy them. The corporate lawyers of the latter demanded to destroy all film copies, yet the court overruled such possibility. TVP S.A. refuses to sell the copyrights, claiming the film's legal faults would expose each copyright owner to numerous claims. Meanwhile, the Telewizja Polska is waiting for a fair verdict of the court in the re-opened case: Amway against the film producers, and is going to show the film afterwards.

Andrzej Fidyk, a documentary filmmaker, comissioned the film about Amway years ago when he was the head of the TVP documentary department. He claims “Welcome to life” is still worth showing, as it uncovers brainwahing mechanisms of big corporations. He says this issue is still up-to-date as it was 12 years ago, and the film is really good. (Read the whole article in Polish at wyborcza.pl)

The film has been viewed on YouTube over 80 000 times so far.

Indeks 73 Commentary:

Our open letter, in which we expressed our hope Henryk Dederko's film would be officially screened after 12 years, and cultural institutions would support the Warsaw Film Festival organisers, unfortunately, wasn't successful. The screening was cancelled. Yet, censorship procedures initiated by the Amway direct sale retailer are doomed to failure in the era of the internet. The attempts to buy the film's copyrights and destroy all its copies do not spread on its availability on the internet. The whole version of the film is available on YouTube. (Translator's note: The film was not available any more on You Tube in December 2009) The first part of the film was published on YouTube on 12 October 2009 and till 1 pm on 14 October 2009 the film was viewed 82,128 times! In the cinema the film would have been viewed only by a few hundred people.

The case of “Welcome to life” is a result of old legal regulations concerning protection of personal goods in the civil action, combined with prolixity of legal proceedings and weakness of the courts. Despite the fact that this particular regulation was changed in 2005, it still allows to put a ban on presenting the work until the legal case concerning protection of this particular work finishes. The regulation was questioned by the Polish Spokesperson for Civil Rights in 2007 and was sent to the Polish Constitutional Tribunal. Unfortunately, the Tribunal hasn't reached the verdict yet, even though the issue was raised in the letter from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in July 2009. Until the verdict is reached neither the Ministry of Justice nor the Polish Codification Comission can start legislative actions.

A good aspect of withdrawing Dederko's film from the Festival is the fact it proves again that censorship in Poland still exists in 2009. Many similar incidents are hushed up, yet this particular act of censorship gained a lot of publicity. The Festival guests from Poland and abroad witnessed censorship proceedings. We hope that the issue of infringement of Art. 73 of the Polish Constitution and the fact the Polish Civil Code allows preventional censorship will be eventually discussed openly in the public debate.


Read more (in Polish):
Dederko: Nie złożyłem broni
Producent filmu o Amwayu: TVP celowo zakazała pokazu, Łukasz Antkiewicz, Gazeta.pl
Zmienić prawo, skończyć z cenzurą! Roman Pawłowski, Gazeta Wyborcza