Grizzled faces and toothless smiles silently belie any notion that time has stood still for these Carpathian mountain villagers. What they do convey with tremendous force and poignancy is just how little anything modern, notably amenities, has touched their lives. These are men and women bound to the earth they've tended for decades. Pictures of the Old World is no sentimental journey into the past; director Dusan Hanák offers us much more in his frank and poetic study of people who have lived in extreme conditions and, nearing the end of their lives, now reflect on life, love, hardship, happiness, loneliness, war, dreams...There's the legless man who built his own house, the women in the market, the man who talks of space travel and his girlfriend, the fellow whose idea of paradise is grazing sheep. They don't always have answers for Hanák's questions but the film says much about the complexity of the human spirit, its persistence and its capacity to endure. In a credit of thanks, Hanak tips his hat to Jan Svankmajer-a clue to the treat that awaits you as Pictures explores a tiny, fragile world of texture, depth and revelation. Made in 1972, this ethnographic documentary was banned by Slovakian officials for depicting a flawed society; finally released in 1988, it won the Grand Prize at Nyon. --Laura Thielen