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And If They Haven’t passed Away – They’re Living Happily Ever After...
Original title: Und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind - dann leben sie noch heute...
documentary - DE, 2007, color + b/w, 290min.
chronicle, biography, portrait, serie

Director Winfried Junge, Barbara Junge
Producer à jour Film, RBB
Script Winfried Junge, Barbara Junge Camera Hans-Eberhard Leupold, Harald Klix Music Gerhard Rosenfeld
Stills Hans-Eberhard Leupold, Harald Klix, Winfried Junge Poster Art Detlef Helmbold

Voices
Winfried Junge

Synopsis
In 1961, fourteen days after the Wall was build, director Winfried Junge launched the film project Children of Golzow in the Oderbruch region. By now it is the oldest long-term chronicle of film history and shows adolescence and fates of a generation of people who started school together in a village, 80 km to the east of Berlin, almost five decades ago. The film maker has accompanied them on their different paths and shows their current lives in today’s reunited Germany. Between 1996 and 2003, Barbara and Winfried Junge dedicated individual films to eight Children of Golzow until, in 2006, the slow farewell from Golzow has begun with the two-parter “And if they haven’t passed away…”. The end of the endless story is constructed in overall four parts.

In 2007 the film makers brought the project to an end with the two-parter "And If They Haven’t passed Away – They’re Living Happily Ever After... The Children from Golzow. The End of an Endless Story" (Part 3+4). Five former pupils who were enrolled to primary school in 1961 are being portrayed.

Part 3 focuses on Elke, Karin and Gudrun as well as Gudrun’s father, Arthur Klitzke, the well-known head of the collectivized farm in Golzow. There is also a reencounter with the first class teacher Marlies Teike.

Part 4 focuses on Bernhard and Eckhard who remain friends until today. It was not always easy for the camera, says Winfried Junge, because the two of them were quiet children who used to let others come to the fore. The film makers chose the stylistic device of a double portrait because the two have several things in common.

Bernhard and Eckhard – both trained engine fitters – correspond to the image of tight-lipped, thoughtful countryfolk who usually wait and see. But eventually the two men go increasingly separate ways – in spite of their common starting point.

A film from the longest long-term-observation of international film history – „The Children Of Golzow“ from 1961 until today.

Festivals and Awards
Berlin International Film Festival (Forum) 2008, Part 3: International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film 2007, Norwegian Film Institute and Goethe Institut Oslo 2008: "The other Germany", Taiwan International Documentary Festival 2008

Further Information (partially only in german)
This Film was presented in the follwing series:

• Info PDF 20 Jahre Deutsche Einheit
Spiel-, Dokumentar- und Trickfilme zu dem zeithistorischen Thema


• Info PDF 20 years German Reunification
Overview of feature, documentary and animated films


• Info PDF Die Golzow Saga (deutsche Version)
Überblick über die Langzeitdokumentation "Die Kinder von Golzow" von Barbara und Winfried Junge


• Info PDF The Golzow Saga (english version)
Long-term-observation by Barbara and Winfried Junge.