Pictures of the Old World ( Obrazy star?ho sveta )

Pictures of the Old World (DVD) (*)

$26.99

Original Title: Obrazy star?ho sveta
Language Selections:
Czech ( Mono )
English ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
United Kingdom ( PAL/Region 0 )

Running Time:
64 min + 23 min extras

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Interactive Menu
Scene Access
Short Film
Black & White
Booklet
Remastered

Movie filmed in 1972 and produced in:
Czech Republic ( Russia, Eastern Europe )

Directed By:
Dusan Hanÿk

Written By:
Dusan Hanÿk

Actors:
Dusan Hanÿk

Synopsis:

Du an Hanÿk's renowned film (voted the best Slovak film of all time by critics in 2000) is a poetic visual essay on the forgotten peoples of remote villages in the Tatra Mountains. Inspired by the photographs of Slovak artist Martin Martinek, whose pictures distilled entire lifetimes into luminous, intransient images, Hanÿk creates his own distinctive impressions of the artist's work, crafting a polyphony of human stories. The film documents the lives of nine old people the textures of faces, of hands, and of landscape predominate alongside an obstinate vitality and desire for life. At odds with the Communist propaganda of the time, its depiction of poverty punctuated with alcoholism, religion, and the hardships of the subjects lives, resulted in the film being withdrawn from release. Condemned for its aesthetics of ugliness, the film remained banned for many years. However, Hanÿk's film is not a political, polemical or even social film. It goes far deeper to more fundamental levels of human experience - its power and beauty lies in its unique portrait of a people who seem to have been forgotten by the modern world.

Pictures of the Old World is an unquestioned masterpiece of European documentary cinema, with existential radicalism that offers a contrast to the shallowness of hundreds of other documentary films showing images from the outskirts of civilization. The outskirts here are a Slovakian town in the Tatra Mountains. Though censored for 17 years, Dusan Hanÿks poetic visual essay is not a political or even social film. It goes to far deeper and more fundamental levels of human experience. Inspired by the photographs of Martin Martinek, the films power lies in its unusual portraits of people whose raw visual beauty radiates from their very souls. Some, like the village cosmos aficionado or the disabled old man who climbs stairs on his knees, are hard to forget.

This product was added to our catalog on Thursday 05 March, 2015.

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