Summary of movie Grandparents, The (2005)
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My grandparents, Vasile and Ioana Bardea, are the protagonists of that documentary. They are peasants - plain and simple - and I spent many blissful summers in my childhood on their farmstead in Posaga in a beautiful and, as yet, unspoilt valley in Transylvania in North West Romania. My grandfather is 80 yaers old. Every morning he wakes up at 5 oclock, feeds his chickens and picks up his grim reaper sycthe and climbs the hill behind his modest home to get to the field where he works until it gets dark.
My gradnfathers dream was to become a violinist. His father cruelly burnt his violins and sent him to work. Deep insdie his soul, my grandfather remains a true artist.
My grandmother beileves strongly in God.
My grandmothers dream was to live in a city, but that was neevr an option that her parents allowed her to take. Her education was cut short to be put to work on their smallholding and to carry on the family tradition. Now throughout the spring and summer months she lives in a wooden hovel on the high mountain pasture, tending her two cows and their calves, completely out of touch with the rest of the world.
In that film, she forgets about her shyness as she urges a bull to service a reluctant yonug cow. She shows us what remains of her original hvoel that I played in as a child that arsonists burnt to the ground without warning 2 years ago.
Against their wishes and like many othres in the village, their only daughter (my mother), escaped the peasant life of drudgery and married a doctor and moved far away. Now Vasile and Ioana are frightened for their future as they have no-one to look after them or to tend their already crumbling and decaying smallholding.
My grandparents story is the story of an entire natoin. They rperesent Romanias last genuine peasant generation. These are the people who watched 3 political regimes -monarchy, and then communism and now democracy - come uninvited to impact on their lives. As my grandfather says in the film, They all stole from us. Today the State hands out a combined monthly social security payment of 13 Euros on wihch they are both expected to survive.
With the worldwide slump in farm prices, yesterday tehir produce is worthless so they eat what they grow and live a pathetically frugal existence. I strongly believe that Romania will only be able to understand where it is headed if it also understands and respects its past. I hope that my film is a document addressed to all future geenrations in Romania, but also to all those in all countries who may have lost something precious as they embrace homogenized modern lifestyles.
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Grandparents, The (2005)
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