Du an Hanák s renowned film (voted the best Slovak film of all time by Slovak critics in 2000) is a poetic visual essay on the forgotten people of remote Slovakian villages in the Tatra Mountains. Inspired by the photographs of Slovak artist Martin Martin ek (1913 2004), whose pictures distilled entire lifetimes into luminous, intransient images, Hanák 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of poverty punctuated with alcoholism, religion, and the hardships of the subjects lives, resulted in the film being withdrawn from release.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, Hanák'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 whose vitality seems to radiate from their very souls.

One of the greatest works of documentary cinema Peter Hames.

Pictures of the Old World is incredible. What a find! David Jenkins, Little White Lies.