Commune of Bliss

When in the 16th century an Anabaptist community from Germany proclaimed the commune as the ideal Christian way of life, they were persecuted all the way to the stake. Descendants of this group found a safe haven in Alberta, Canada, where the German director Klaus Stanjek follows a colony of 101 “souls” in their daily activities. He interviews and films the inhabitants, and alternates these scenes with the profundities from 1553 that still direct their lives. The Hutterites, dressed in medieval attire and speaking a German dialect, fill their existences with work, work, and more work. Radio, TV, sex education and dinosaurs are taboo. But even the Hutterites, named after Jacob Hutter, who was condemned and burned at the stake in Innsbruck in 1536, turn out to be ordinary people struggling with jealousy and for power. Or as one interviewee states, “It's not all roses in the community.” They run their farms with modern tools, although sometimes this causes problems when for example a new tractor comes with a radio. The older generation is against it, but the younger people are more flexible. As an old preacher says, “The world is a dangerous and confusing place.”