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This book is a study of documentary series such as Michael Apted's world-famous Seven Up films that set out to trace the life-journeys of individuals from their earliest schooldays till they are fully grown adults. In addition to Seven Up, the book provides extended accounts of the two other best known longitudinal series to have been produced in the last three or four decades. It includes Winifred and Barbara Junge's The Children of Golzow and Swedish director Rainer Hartleb's The Children of Jordbro. The book first examines some of the principal generic features of long docs and considers the highly significant role that particular institutions have had on their production, promotion and dissemination. It then explores a study of how the individual works originated, with a special emphasis on the nurturing role of particular institutions. The book also explores the affinities that long docs have with soap opera texts, which have similar aspirations to neverendingness. Both long docs and soaps rely on an episodic mode of delivery and both seek to persuade their audience that they are attempting to chronicle real-time developments. Finally, the book explores the variety of ways in which long doc filmmakers contrive to bring their work to a satisfactory conclusion.
chord with audiences who could not be expected to pick up on some of the more culturally specific references. Such audiences are, however, clearly able to identify with some of the more universal elements of these life-stories. Thus, somewhat belying the claim that the series is rich in socio-political insights, it would appear that the source of the films’ appeal may well lie in their ability to evoke in an especially powerful way what Apted has repeatedly referred to as the ‘drama of ordinary life’ (Apted, 1998). The Children of Golzow Just like Apted’s Seven Up
‘competitors’ were the German series The Children of Golzow2 and the Swedish series The Children of Jordbrö. Both series had already been in production for several decades. The Children of Golzow had been running since 1961 (though there were some reports that the directors Winfried and Barbara Junge were thinking of calling it a day soon).3 I also learned that the Swedish director Rainer Hartleb, having worked on The Children of Jordbrö for more than three decades, was also planning to bring the curtain down on the project in 2006. As I pursued my research into how these
Concluding remarks On several occasions in the course of this study I have had occasion to mention the generally high esteem in which long doc works are held by their respective audiences. Barbara and Winfried Junge in their comprehensive survey of the Children of Golzow project (Junge, 2004), provide one of the more detailed accounts of the reception of a long doc by reproducing a number of letters and emails sent in by viewers and a cross-section of critical reviews extracted from newspapers and magazines. These materials not only provide evidence of the
project in the longer term. With The Children of Golzow the progress of the work was even more subject to institutional pressures than was the case with the Swedish and the British long docs. Junge and his team were always aware that they were working under a set of tight constraints and that each time they were granted permission to make another film, it was coupled with particular expectations as to the kind of work that would emerge. When one reads Junge’s own account of how the individual Golzow films came to be made, for instance, one is made constantly aware of the
– as in the case of Jochen from The Children of Golzow – to capture on film the highly dramatic moment when a subject announces that they intend to sever all future involvement with the project. Critical retrospection As well as examining how filmmakers prepare the way for the conclusion of such marathon works, I will also be considering in 138 Taking the long view this chapter how, over the years, filmmakers have had to adapt their techniques as their projects have developed. Just like other documentarists, long doc producers have generally been willing to subject
at Granada of working in various forms of narrative fiction has been particularly helpful when he has been editing the Up films (Apted, 1998). The Seven Up story begins in 1964 when Apted and a fellow production trainee were assigned to work on a special World in Action programme. The programme was to be the last edition to be produced by the man who until then had been running World in Action, the charismatic Australian Tim Hewat. Hewat plays a similar role in the history of Seven Up as Karl Gass does in the history of The Children of Golzow. Just like Gass, Hewat
lives of the community-dwellers. With long docs the situation would appear, at first sight, to be somewhat different. Here there would appear to be a greater concern with showing how external events occurring within the wider socio-historical world inevitably have a determining impact on individuals and communities. On closer inspection, however, long docs are not always as interested as it is sometimes claimed they are in investigating the ways in which individual lives are shaped by external forces. They may, as shown in The Children of Golzow, contain a certain
may loudly and histrionically emote. Producers of long docs are more concerned with quietly tracing and chronicling the lives of others in a way calculated to elicit a more reflective and even at times philosophical response from the audience. Documentary work with a longitudinal dimension There has, over the years, been a relatively large number of works that have a longitudinal dimension. In the case of Germany one can almost speak of a longitudinal tradition. In addition to The Children of Golzow there has been Berlin – Ecke Bundesplatz (directed by Hans