Childhood (1987)

Movie
Original title	childhood
Country of production	GDR
original language	German
Publishing year	1987
length	88 minutes
Rod
Director	Siegfried Kühn
script	Siegfried Kühn Dieter Wolf (Dramaturgy)
production	DEFA , KAG Babelsberg
music	Hans Jürgen Wenzel
camera	Peter Ziesche
cut	Brigitte Krex
occupation
Carmen-Maja Antoni : grandmother Marc Poser : Alfons, 9 years Fritz Marquardt : Nardini Helmut Müller-Lankow : grandfather Angelika Böttiger : Aunt Hede Martina Eitner : Aunt Mieke Renate Usko : Maid Karin Klaus Bieligk : roofer Andrzej Pieczyński : Johann Heide Kipp : Cielchen Günter Junghans : Riedel Hermann Beyer : Schräter Sibling wisdom : high wire troop Birgit Friedrich : Child Christa Sven Malzkies : Felix Riedel Elvira Grecki : Ms. Riedel Carl Heinz Choynski : Hugo Stiller Gerd Gallrein : Postman Werner Dissel : Teacher Peter Kalisch : Mayor Werner Kos : Georg Gogolin Siegrid Reintsch : Alfons mother Renate Henoch : Blonde woman Lothar Tarelkin : Clown Coco Friederike Pöschel : Caroline Waldemar Baeger : Poatty-Hempel Greta Baeger : Woman with a drum Hans-Joachim Felber : Catholic pastor Günther Polensen : Old man Wolfgang Tix : Lilliputians Alfred Müller : Narrator

Childhood is a DEFA feature film by Siegfried Kühn from 1987 .

action

A year before the end of the war, seen through the eyes of nine-year-old Alfons. His mother is “in position” in Berlin and cannot take the boy with her. He stays with his grandparents on a small farm with a sawmill somewhere in Silesia. One day when he and his grandfather fetched a sofa from town, he irritated the horse so that it would go through, slide into a ditch and overturn with the wagon. From now on, grandpa has to spend his time in bed. In return, the assigned Polish slave laborer can now sit at the table while eating. When the coarse grandfather sees it once, he tries to drive it away with a stick and falls over dead. Not entirely innocent of death, Alfons worships his grandmother's mother like a saint and, in the waking dream during mass, imagines himself as the baby Jesus on the lap of the Virgin Mary.

But the sprightly widow is so utterly worldly; When a flea circus with the Italian director Nardini enters the village, she falls in love with him. For the local farmer leader Riedel, the circus people are no more than "pack of gypsies", just good enough for rough fun and deadly expulsion. So Nardini sells him his circus pig, which is now slaughtered for a festival. But when Riedel realizes that this is not the trained pig, Nardini has to flee. The grandma continues to meet secretly with the ringmaster and Alfons initial jealousy gives way. When he learns from his school friends that Nardini's hiding place is no longer a secret and that the supporters of the National Socialists want to let it go up in flames, he warns his grandma so that Nardini can get to safety in time. Only the grandma mother doesn't want to leave her farm yet. Only when the front is getting closer and closer and she learns that Germany will end on the Oder in the future, does she pack her belongings on a wagon and move west with Alfons and her lover.

production

Childhood was filmed by the DEFA studio for feature films (Artistic Working Group “Babelsberg”) on Orwo Color and had a festive premiere on August 25, 1987 in the Berlin cinemas International and Babylon . It bears the autobiographical traits of the director Siegfried Kühn, who dedicated the film to his grandmother. The first broadcast in the first DFF program took place on May 20, 1990. The film was shown on ARD on April 13, 1992.

criticism

Günter Sobe says in the Berliner Zeitung that you don't need the circus. It would be enough if it was never possible to see exactly what was reality and what came from the boy's imagination. Such an ideal gliding into one another of the realistic and the fantastic could have given a relaxed, loving irony even more space and defined the style of the film more clearly. Georg Antosch believes in the Neue Zeit that childhood is a personal property of each one of us and that it is only communicative beyond our own memories if it at least offers others associations. Siegfried Kühn is so far removed from that that our audience should find it somewhat difficult with this film. The lexicon of international films wrote that this is a bizarre village story, permeated with human warmth, but not particularly exciting, based on the director's childhood memories. An outstanding actress is Carmen-Maja Antoni as an emancipatory grandmother.

Awards

• 1987: State award of the GDR for feature films: Valuable
• 1987: Critics' award “The big mouth” for the best film
• 1987: Critics' award “The big flap” for best actress to Carmen-Maja Antoni
• 1988: 5th National Feature Film Festival of the GDR: Award for best supporting actor to Hermann Beyer
• 1988: 5th National Feature Film Festival of the GDR: Prize for the best female leading role to Carmen-Maja Antoni

literature

• F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 321 .

Web links

• Childhood in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Childhood at filmportal.de
• Childhood at the DEFA Foundation

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of August 26, 1987
2. ↑ Neue Zeit from August 27, 1987
3. ↑ childhood. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .