Piotr Malecki. photojournalist. filmmaker.

2011-11-03T15:24:00.026+01:00

"Wika" multimedia featured in Best of The Web list of The Los Angeles Times Framework blog

"Piotr Malecki’s piece on the 74-year-old DJ is wonderful. First, the character is rocking in multiple senses of the word and so darn cute. It helps that Piotr is a really good photographer and journalist. His mix of stills and video works seamlessly. This slice of life is unique and delightful to explore"

direct link to the film:

Wika Szmit is 74 years old and a pensioner. Three times a week she runs discos at the Bolek club in Warsaw.
Produced, edited and shot by Piotr Malecki.
Part of an ongoing series about life in Warsaw.

2011-10-18T10:41:00.012+02:00

Where Meat Means Money

In traditional small-town South-West Kansas and the centre of American cowboy culture, the new social pattern emerges. Next to white Americans there are now tens of thousands of immigrants from Mexico and Salvador, as well as asylants from Somalia, Burma and Laos. They all came from different backgrounds, have different religions. But there's one thing that the Americans here and the newcomers have in common; that's Beef.
They're all here to work in countless ranches, farms, feed yards and four enormous meatpacking plants, each killing 5 thousand cattle a day. State of Kansas has dominated the beef industry in the US, and every fourth piece of this meat on the shop shelves is produced here. In Kansas beef means business.
The meat and poultry industry is the largest sector of US agriculture, grossing an impressive US $ 155 billion in 2009 and employing a total of some 6.2 million people in companies involved in meat production along with their suppliers, distributors, retailers and other connected industries.

Click here for Video: "Where Meat Means Money"

2011-07-06T09:24:00.009+02:00

Call Centre

The best call centre consultants are like doctors - they look beneath the skin of client to determine the best way to sell him a product.
Over 200 thousand Poles work in 1500 call centres in Poland. Call centres get commissions from companies that do not want to have their own hotlines or salesmen. One employee of call centre can sometimes work for several client companies, switching from one to another between the calls. They sell mobile phone services, FCMG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) such as cosmetics, provide hotline, or vindicate the debt.
Nowadays western corporations use Polish call centres more because they appreciate the smaller cultural difference, with only 10% more expense comparing to the call centres in India.
The consultants must work according to the specific rules. Marta, call centre employee has such productivity rules: 19 talks per hour for 7 hours minus 30 minutes for lunch, which she can have the earliest 2 hours 40 minutes after the beginning of her shift, or the latest 2 hours 40 minutes before the end of her shift. She also has 20 minutes for being "not ready" which she can use for anything, like going to toilet or stretching her knees. When she uses "not ready" minutes, she starts her stop watch, which counts every second because her productivity percentage is being lowered if she uses more than 20 minutes. And noone will give her additional productivity points when someone calls just because he is bored and wants to have a chat, or she gets a call from pervert that breaths heavily in his handset for two minutes. She is not supposed to stop any conversation even if she has to listen to insults.
She was taught at the training that there are four types of clients in the world: red - talks with a high voice and feels superior because he pays high bills, that's usually businessmen or lawyers; blue - medium bills, looks out for flaws, professor; green - that's a client that always says sorry, happy that finally got connection; yellow - has a prepaid phone, always unhappy, that's usually mothers who bought their kids a phone and now child has blocked a PIN number. The worst thing is that after each conversation she must propose a "Texas" package, asking the exact words "do you sometimes happen to call more than your bundled minutes?" It's a greek tragedy; if she doesn't propose the package, she will have less productivity, if she does, but the client was hard, he will score her "aspects" with four zeroes on his phone's keyboard.
(text by Edyta Gietka/Polityka Magazine)

2011-06-01T11:01:00.014+02:00

NEWS:
"City horses" video recognized
This short documentary about horse crisis in Ireland has received first prize for multimedia in Polish Grand Press Photo contest. June 2011