The Vietnam War was just ending when Hai ‘Nam’ Bui Ngoc had reached university. He was one of the few lucky ones given a chance to travel to the other side of the world to study ship building. After a few weeks spent travelling by train from Hanoi to Warsaw, he saw everything other than what he had imagined. But this was only the beginning of his incredible journey...

In August 1980, after the firing of popular shipyard worker, Anna Walentynowicz, a strike broke out at Shipyard in Gdańsk. Suddenly this massive complex on the Polish coast, with 16,000 employees, was under worker occupation, and every day other workplaces in Gdańsk and around the country started joining in. How did a shipyard become a focal point for the battle for freedom and democracy? Find out in the latest episode of Stories From The Eastern West.

Chernobyl had cast a shadow over our childhoods. It was reportedly the cause of all the chronic diseases we’d struggled with. We went there to walk into the belly of the beast, to debunk any nonsense around it. To hear about the disaster and everyday struggles. But what we came back with was something else entirely – a beautiful and uplifting tale about love. Love for home, love for nature, love for people. Something stronger than the biggest nuclear accident in the history of humankind.

The new SFTEW season is nearly here! This year, we've travelled to the far reaches of the globe for you: we went deep down into the Chernobyl Exclusion zone, visited New Zealand, and went back in time and space to deliver yet another set of stories that changed our world. Stay tuned: the first episode drops July 16th!

How a teen's letter to a stranger in the Soviet Union led to a long-distance friendship that has lasted decades. Part of our mini-series The Final Curtain. Like many teens growing up in the People’s Republic of Poland, Ewa decided to send a letter to a stranger in the Soviet Union. Lena from Moscow wrote back to her, and they quickly found they had a lot in common, including a love of both dogs and Vysotsky records. And they're still writing today... forty years later.

How a giant communal song festival helped Estonians regain independence from the USSR.  What was the Singing Revolution? How did it lead to the independence of Estonia and the other Baltic states? Was it possible for Estonia's Russian- and Estonian-speaking citizens to finally move on from past resentments? Find out in this episode of The Final Curtain.

How a Romanian mining town that lost its mine fought to turn its remains into a cultural hub.  In our second and final episode on Ion Barbu and the town of Petrila, we learn how the mine, the main employer in the town, was unable to achieve profitability in the new era of capitalism and was closed down for good. What happened to the town once the mine closed? Did Ion manage to save the buildings of the former mine? Find out in this episode of The Final Curtain.

How a Romanian miner made political caricatures at a time when making fun of the country's leadership could mean a visit from the secret police.  How did Ion balance being both a miner and a political caricaturist? What happened when the secret police arrested him for mocking the Romanian president? How does he recall the sudden and violent fall of the Ceaușescu regime? Find out in this episode of The Final Curtain.

How a single mother in Kyiv experienced the end of the USSR and survived the harsh economic realities of life in post-communist Ukraine in the early 1990s. How did Iryna end up selling toy cars on the streets of Kyiv? How did she and her friends react to the putsch of August 1991? How did she cope with the early days of capitalism? Find out in this episode of The Final Curtain.

How East Berlin's leading political cabaret tried to get their message through despite strict state censorship... and what happened when the system they were laughing at ceased to exist.  For the citizens of the GDR, laughter was often the best medicine when dealing with the absurdities of the political system they lived under. And if you were a resident of East Berlin, there was no better place than Kabarett Distel (meaning 'thorn' in German).

Meet the headstrong musician who's been viciously rebelling against both of the systems he lived under... and created some truly worthwhile art along the way. In late 1980s Tymon played in various bands, and formed the avant-garde art group Totart, whose absurd, and often obscene, performances and happenings aimed to provoke disorder and outrage. Then, in 1989, the whole system came tumbling down. What did the arrival of free-market capitalism in the 1990s mean for artists and musicians?

How a banned singer-songwriter became an unwilling musical hero through his home-copied cassettes.  Jacek Kleyff was an increasingly popular topical songwriter in 1970s Poland. But he was unwilling to bend to the demands of the communist state's censorship, so the authorities reacted by banning him from appearing in public, including radio and TV. What did Jacek do when he was blacklisted by the communist authorities? How did he become a cult figure within the Polish opposition?

How an East German cameraman filmed the first major demonstrations in the GDR from the top of a church steeple in Leipzig. A month later, East Germany would effectively cease to exist. Part of our mini-series The Final Curtain. How did Siegbert and his friend Aram Radomski end up filming the first major protest in the GDR on 9th October 1989?  How did they outfox the Stasi and get the footage to the West? Find out in the newest episode of The Final Curtain.

Part of our mini-series The Final Curtain. Wojciech Stawiszyński tells us how In the darkest period of martial law, he and his clandestine organisation that stood behind the outlawed Radio Solidarność had to resort to incredibly complicated ways of operating, funding, broadcasting and even communicating with each other. How did they manage to outmanoeuvre the communist secret services? And what happened when communism was gone?

Part of our mini-series The Final Curtain. How a photographer from London gave the rest of the world a glimpse of everyday life behind the Iron Curtain. Chris Niedenthal found himself in the heart of Communist Poland in the 1970s and 80s, documenting both how ordinary people lived, as well as the major political events leading up to the collapse of the Soviet-backed regime. Through his camera, he created a window into the Polish People's Republic for the rest of the world to peer through.

Part of our mini-series The Final Curtain. How a well-known opposition leader evaded capture by the communist authorities for almost five years. In the early 1980s, the Polish communist leadership declared martial law in December 1981 in order to stop the opposition dead in its tracks. Bujak, one of the opposition leaders, managed to go into hiding before they had a chance to find him. That's how his game of cat and mouse with the dreaded secret police started.

The year 1989 saw a big change. All of Central and Eastern Europe took a U-turn within less than three years and transformed from the gray land behind the Iron Curtain into several independent, quickly developing, free market democracies.  The team behind Stories From The Eastern West is marking this occasion with The Final Curtain, a special mini-series featuring personal tales from the Eastern Bloc’s transformation. The new mini-series The Final Curtain is coming to our feed on August 23rd!

Finland is responsible for many technological breakthroughs from the last couple decades. But back in the early 1990s, Finland’s tech scene was mostly just a lot of teenagers pirating software illegally. In this episode, Molly Schwartz, who lived there for almost two years, dives deep into 8-bit music, pixelated computer screens and the days when games were distributed on C-cassettes. Just how did this small, cold, dark and sparsely-populated country become an IT powerhouse?

During WWII, the Third Reich had a systematic policy of plundering artwork from countries they invaded. But while some of these works of art were destined for the walls of Nazi party officials or the Führermuseum, others were marked for destruction. In fact, there was one particular painting that the Germans were really keen to get rid of. Why did the Third Reich want it gone so badly? And just how would it avoid being captured seeing as it was 10-metres long and weighed nearly a tonne?

Alchemy – the supposed ancient art of turning everyday objects into gold – is widely believed to be obsolete. Interestingly, however, every bit of this notion is wrong. First of all, alchemy is still being practised today and is doing better than ever. And second of all, it apparently was never actually an art of the physical transmutation of objects, but a very profound blend of philosophy, chemistry, physics and religion. Join us on as we travel back to the Middle Ages!

The German Democratic Republic was known for being one of the more politically repressive countries in the former Eastern bloc. But it is also known for its long tradition of nude bathing – known in Germany as Free Body Culture or FKK. In the mid-1950s, this tradition came under threat as the GDR government tried to ban nude bathing completely. Unexpectedly for a country that had no tolerance for dissent, the East German fans of Free Body Culture fought back…

In this bonus episode, you’ll get to hear a song that usually doesn’t leave the thick walls of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Italy. 

The story of a man who mesmerised half a continent... In 1989, the Cold War was coming to an end. The Soviet Union and the whole Eastern Bloc were crumbling. There was confusion everywhere. One day, a state television channel started showing something really strange. A man, looking like Doctor’s Spock muscular brother, was staring at the camera promising to programme people’s brains and free them from all the pain and suffering.

After having to leave Poland, Grotowski continued his ground-breaking work in Potendera, Italy. There he began the final stage of his work at the newly-established Workcenter. This work, based on songs of tradition and objective movements, is done more or less in secrecy, away from the prying eyes of the media and mainstream theatrical world. Listen to Part 2 of our episode on Jerzy Grotowski to find out for yourself what happened there, and what goes on at the Workcenter today…

Starting out as a young director in the Polish provinces, Jerzy Grotowski soon realised that for theatre to reach its true potential the actor should attain complete mastery over their craft. His small group of actors committed to intensive daily training sessions to achieve this. Having achieved international recognition for his ground-breaking productions in the mid to late 1960s, he decided to leave theatre behind and start all over again…..