The period in contemporary Polish history that began with the strikes at Gdańsk shipyard in August 1980, leading to the Solidarity movement, and ending with the imposition of martial law on December 13, 1981, dominated the Western media at the time. It also coincided with Andrzej Wajda's greatest visibility as a filmmaker in the United Kingdom. From April 1981 to January 1982 he was rarely off London screens with his two most outspoken works, Rough Treatment (Bez znieczulenia, 1978) and Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza, 1981), together with revivals of the War Trilogy—A Generation (Pokolenie, 1955), Kanal (1957), and Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament, 1958)—which first made a name for him among British audiences, and Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru, 1977), the film whose frankness startled British critics familiar with the “coded” approach to contemporary politics practiced by most Eastern European filmmakers. Wajda gave the Guardian Lecture at the National Film Theatre in November 1980. A new Arena profile was broadcast with Rough Treatment in a prime-time slot on BBC Two in September 1981; while BBC Two and Channel 4 came to a “historic” agreement to broadcast the Man diptych over that Christmas/New Year period, just after martial law was imposed. More significantly, Wajda moved out of the film columns onto the foreign affairs pages of newspapers—his links with Solidarity were frequently mentioned, in particular his staging of the ceremony unveiling the monuments to workers killed in the 1970 Gdańsk riots, which also featured his preferred actor Daniel Olbrychski. This British attention peaked in May 1981 when a photograph of Wajda appeared on the front page of the Guardian, showing him receiving the Palme d’Or for Man of Iron.