Pictures of the old world" is a non-fictional movie consisting of dialogues with old people who haven't been "deformed by civilisation." The film tries to find answers to questions of human existence. People featured in the film tell their life stories that are linked to their ancestors' customs. The film is a poetic visual essay with entire lifetimes of experience on human existence. Hanak documents the textures of their faces, hands, and landscape's predominate alongside an obstinate vitality and desire for life. The director crafts a distinctive polyphony of human stories in a world unsullied by ideology. The will to live and overcome life's hardships is moulded in Hanak's vision into a celebration of authentic humanity.
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of poverty punctuated with alcoholism, religion, and the hardships of the subjects lives, resulted in the film being withdrawn from release.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, Hanak's film is not a polemical film. It attempts to address fundamental levels of human experience - its power and beauty lies in its tender studying of a people who seem to have been forgotten by their society.
The film combines images taken with a camera by a photographer called Martin Martincek, and Hanak's own footage, and alternates between the two in a very professional way. The result of this contradictorial filmmaking approaches with the use of collage effect ultimately establishes and defines the film's unique poetic style. The director also uses music, song, synchronised and non-synchronised sound and background noise, significant details and local scenery taken both from photographs and exteriors. Hanák observes the individual characters in relation to their surroundings, but he seeks, and finds, the core and depth of their security in the people themselves. What has value in life?, he asks them.
