Und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind...Die Kinder von Golzow. Teil 1+2

And If They Haven’t Passed Away… The Children From Golzow. The End of an Endless Story

In 1961 Winfried Junge made a short portrait of children in their first year of school in the East German village of Golzow (Oderbruch), only a few days before the Berlin Wall was built. In the meantime this chronicle has grown in more than four decades into 18 films between 13 and 284 minutes in length.

The latest work portrays five of the "Children of Golzow", who are now all over the age of 50: Ilona, electrical engineer and later youth functionary in Frankfurt (Oder); Winfried, engineer for electronic equipment making, who for a while was also commander of the industrial militia group in his factory; Jürgen, the house painter and wallpaper hanger who is now a transport and supply worker in Manschnow; Christian, agricultural machine fitter who is meanwhile superintendent at the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau in Berlin; and finally Petra, who like Winfried finished high school, wanted to become a doctor, but moved to Mecklenburg as a civil engineer.

Since 1982 the life histories of the "Children of Golzow" are now under discussion for the tenth time in the International Forum. In the meantime the original ten-year Oderbruch school is only used as an elementary school. A small museum with a permanent exhibition on the "Children of Golzow" has been installed in the classrooms that are no longer used.

This long-term chronicle, conducted over a period of 45 years, is the longest in film history. There might still be a final episode about the Golzow "children" coming up, according to Barbara and Winfried Junge, which could have the title: "…and they lived happily ever after".

Source: 56. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (catalogue)