Release Date: 23 Feb 2015Dušan Hanák's renowned film was voted by critics as the best Slovak film of all time. Inspired by the photographs of Slovak artist Martin Martinček (1913–2004) whose pictures distilled entire lifetimes into luminous and intransient images, Hanák created his own distinctive impressions of the artist's work in reflecting a myriad of human stories.
At odds with the Communist propaganda of the time, the authorities withdrew the film from release and it remained condemned and banned for many years. Hanák's film, however, is not political or polemical but explores much more fundamental levels of human experience. Its power and beauty lie in its unique portrait of a people left behind by the modern world. A singular and shattering film.
The DVD is presented from a superb new HD digital restoration of the film, and also features Hanák's acclaimed short films Old Shatterhand Came to Us (Prisiel k nám Old Shatterhand, 1966) and Mass (Omša, 1967) - plus a new essay on the film by by author and academic Jonathan Owen.
• Presented from a superb new HD restoration of the film.
• Dušan Hanák's acclaimed short films Old Shatterhand Came to Us (Prisiel k nám Old Shatterhand, 1966) and Mass (Omša, 1967).
• 16-page booklet featuring a new essay by author and academic Jonathan Owen.
• New and improved English subtitle translation.
• Available for the first time on home video in the English-speaking world.
Verona Ralíková, Adam Kura, Jozef Orságh, Juraj Michalík,
Františka Ševčíková, Adam Struhárňanský, Jozef Račko,
Alojz Kováč, Matej Dudka, Anton Miček
Directed by Dušan Hanák
Story and screenplay - Dušan Hanák
Cinematography - Alojz Hanúsek
Music - G.F. Händel, Václav Hálek, Jozef Malovec
Sound - Ondrej Polomský
Editor - Alfréd Benčič
Photographs by Martin Martinček
1988 20th Nyon International Festival of Documentary Films / Winner: Grand Prix Golden Sestercius, Audience Award, Award of the Youth Jury, and Honorary Mention of the Ecumenical Jury
1988 Leipzig International Week of Documentary and Short Film / Winner: Don Quixote Award (FICC), FIPRESCI Award, and Prize of the GDR Film and Television Producers Union
1989 Munich International Festival of Documentary Films / Winner: Best Film
1989 European Film Awards / Special Mention -Dušan Hanák
1990 Montreal Festival of New Film and Video / Winner:
Prix Alcan Award for Best Film
1990 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards / Winner: Best Documentary Film
"One of the greatest works of documentary cinema"
Peter Hames
"There are many beautiful, moving moments and images...
This is such a beautiful, non-political, non-polemical film"
Senses of Cinema
"Pictures of the Old World is incredible. What a find!"
David Jenkins
"The film looks into the depths of the human soul, which is the hidden home of the most human of all emotions – the eternal and immortal desire of people for freedom"
A. J. Fraňo, Film a divadlo
"The two directors who come to mind while watching Pictures of the Old World are Chris Marker and Pier Paolo Pasolini...
The way Pasolini filmed the faces of real people with all their supposed aesthetic defects as a way to question what we would coin as 'beauty' is also adopted here... these images only add to the film's bracing sense of existential gravity. Exceptional." David Jenkins, Little White Lies