Navigácia: > News > > Second Run releases Pictures of the Old World

Second Run releases Pictures of the Old World

Second Run releases its third Slovak title: following The Sun in a Net and Birds, Orphans and Fools, Dušan Hanák exceptional documentary Pictures of the Old World reaches the English-speaking audiences in the Second Run DVD library.

Rated by critics as the best Slovak film of all time, Pictures of the Old World, inspired by the photographs of a renowned Slovak artist Martin Martinček, brings suggestive portraits of old people from the Slovak regions of Liptov and Orava who are able to enjoy their individual freedom even in the times of chaos and insecurity in the society and civilization.

The DVD presents the film in HD restoration, with new English subtitles, accompanied by Hanák's acclaimed short films Old Shatterhand Came to Us (Prišiel k nám Old Shatterhand, 1966) and Mass (Omša, 1967) as part of the bonus material, accompanied by a 16-page booklet featuring a new essay by author and academic Jonathan Owen: "Aesthetically as well as thematically, Hanák considers the film a return to his roots, expressing his interest in 'the poetry that exists in life itself'. This belief in the poetic and marvellous qualities to be found in the real – a key principle of Surrealism, another movement with which Hanák has sympathies – is also strongly evident visually."

Official release date of the DVD is February 23, 2015.
Mehelli Modi from Second Run comments on their latest release:“It’s not often that one feels really privileged to be able to present a film. Dusan Hanák’s Pictures of the Old World is, for me personally, just such a film... an unquestionable masterwork being presented for the first time on home video to an English-speaking audience.”

David Jenkins of Little While Lies magazine states: "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.... Exceptional."

Second Run DVDs are available in stores, through the website of Second Run and all the online retailers such as:
Pictures of the Old World on Amazon
Pictures of the Old World on MovieMail
Pictures of the Old World on Zavvi

published: 22.02.2015
updated: 11.08.2020