Elf Jahre alt

Eleven Years Old
A portrait of a fifth-grade class at a rural school in East Germany, shot in January 1966. This is the third film in director Winfried Junge’s long-term documentary series Die Kinder von Golzow (The Children of Golzow, 1961 – 2007) and here he follows the children at school and at play. The eleven-year-olds take to the microphone and speak about their desires, questions and visions of utopia. On TV, they see the horrors of war in Vietnam. After a day trip to the nearby Oder river, which marks the Polish border, they study the Bertolt Brecht poem “Children’s Anthem”: “Grace spare not and spare no labour / Passion nor intelligence / That a decent German nation / Flourish as do other lands.” ... Images of spring represent change and the end of the ice age. Then the camera pans up high into the sky.
by Winfried Junge Germany (GDR 1949 to 1990) 1966 29’

Additional information

Download additional information