Paweł Starzec

Documentalist, sociologist, academic teacher.

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Covid Clubs

Covid Clubs is a documentary on (mostly) independent music venues ecosystem in Warsaw during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Main focus is nightlife as an industry, employing many people on unstable contracts and in precarious conditions. Documentations of empty dancefloors was expanded with portraits of owners, managers and workers of visited places, together with interviews about their take on the whole situation. Five years later, more than half places photographed doesn’t exist.

2020





"The most stable in this situation is that we know nothing - the things we do on a daily basis are pretty much out of the picture for any level of government plans, so now, a month after the pandemic is announced, we do not know whether we will remain closed for next week, month or year."

 - Witek, owner of Hydrozagadka and Chmury.






"We really just started to fully function. We were supposed to have our first birthday the weekend before the lockdown, so we were twice as sad. From the beginning, we think of ourselves as a collective. That's why we released the compilation, because in the flood of events on the stream we lacked some collected statements from the producers, and if it wasn't for them, it would not have been all. Now the biggest pain is planning how to go on from where we are now, because we would like to book parties for fall, but no one knows what will happen then, whether the nightlife will come back. There is uncertainty. We want to make up for that canceled birthday when fall comes, as well." 
- Ola, 999.


"What is outside the spotlight of the public opinion is the situation of employees in gastronomy and/or enterntainment business. Generally speaking, this is not a group that earns unbelievably high amounts of money, and suddenly this group was left unable to earn this money almost overnight. In addition to being a club, we are also a social cooperative, and we don't want to leave anyone working with us overboard. We will do everything to prevent firing anyone. Were it not for the support of these people on the public fundraiser, these twenty-few people would likely not have a livelihood, because first there was a lockdown, and then there was questioning and wondering how and whether to support places like ours at all."

- Zuzia and Gosia, members of Pogłos cooperative.














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