PIEMULE is a film about an ethnic group of Czechs which settled over a hundred and fifty years ago in the hills not far from Timisoara. The ancestors of today's inhabitants, craftsmen and farmers came to the Romanian highlands around the year 1822 with their families, work and livelihood. Director Jana Sevikova went to Romania for the first time in the early 1980's and under very difficult conditions, she succeeded over a period of several years in capturing the way of life of one remote village fused with the changing seasons represented by religious ceremonies or social and work rituals (Christmas, carnivals, Easter, weddings, harvests, the ploughing of the land). She presents individual people their customs, behavior and opinions. Employing a complex structure of composition, the film depicts the social aspects of this small enclave foreign to Romania, its history as well as the moral depth of the people . Isolated from a foreign world this community has kept it's language , culture and also a feeling for national identity. The film does not have a factual, explicit commentary in the ordinary sense of the word. It contains the testimonies of individual people and a few essential historical facts: a song depicting the biblical story of the original sin threads it's way through the whole film. The song represents the religious character of these people and how they bear their lot. They live in relative material poverty , they are left to their own resources and the whim of Ceaucescu's regime. The film reminds us of life values which have long disappeared and only exceptionally are they found today. Jana Hadkova, film critic. In 1993, the filmmaker returned to the same place in Romania, ten years after she had completed filming. To her surprise, nothing had changed, life in Rovensko had remained unmarked, not even by Romania's revolution and other changes in the country ruled by a former Communist dictatorship. Time had already stopped during the last century.
