While the communist authorities decide the conditions for an official registration of the Solidarność movement inside, the masses demonstrate in front of the court outside. A contemporary document of the moment when the power of the people seemed to make a lasting cultural opening no longer just a promise but a possibility. At the time, “undesirable” at the Leipzig festival.

“Stay calm and level-headed!” Endless armoured convoys, radio stations broadcasting their potentially last announcements and the Slovak Communist Party meeting Czech party representatives. Shaky images and wailing sirens testify to the tension as Warsaw Pact troops march into Bratislava, too, to suppress the Prague Spring.

On 23 August 1989, the people in the Baltic states demonstrated their solidarity against the Soviet occupation and took to the streets for their sovereignty. They formed an over 600-kilometres-long human chain stretching through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Touching images of a one-of-a-kind event, captured in a lyrical composition.