Romania - Ghimes - a very special Carpathian village

Video Description

Another beautiful little observational documentary of Ghimes village in Bacau county, where the Szekler people, a Hungarian-speaking Romanian minority, live. We first visited Ghimes, in the Eastern Carpathian mountains, not far from Moldova, in 2015, helping Atilla Sarig make hay. The old, traditional ways persist but now, in 2024, it is obvious that the area is changing fast, with more cars, more tarmac, working horses being slowly replaced by tractors, scythes used less and modern houses appearing where once ancient, vernacular farmhouses stood. With fewer house-cows on the small-holdings there are fewer pigs. This is still, nonetheless, life in the slow-lane, where daily chores are never ending and often tough. There is joy and sadness ... while we were there a brown bear killed two precious cows, just like the ones in this film, on the other side of the valley, up in the hills. Again, footage is largely taken with a small, precious, hand-held Panasonic HC X920 camcorder.