Children Without Love

Kurt Goldberger / Czechoslovakia / 1963 / The film already had its Czech Premiere / 43 min.

synopsis

For infants and toddlers, safety, a full stomach, and good health care are not enough: they also need love. The film illustrates the central argument of the book Psychological Deprivation in Childhood (1963) by J. Langmeier and Z. Matějček, as well as the research of physician M. Damborská, through an extensive comparison. Emotional deprivation in a thousand forms – in infant care facilities and children’s homes, at daycare centres, and during long days at preschool – stands in contrast to happier situations, such as those with a mother who emerges from the kitchen at the slightest commotion. The patient camera and Matějček’s questions examine these deprived children and present their image for consideration by the “rulers.”

The film Children Without Love stems from the professional and political shift at the time toward the family, which gradually eroded the socialist belief in the benefits of state-established and professionally managed institutional care for children. Maternity leave, which in 1963 lasted eighteen weeks, was subsequently extended to 26 weeks over the course of five years and supplemented by a new option to stay home with the child until the child’s first birthday. The period of the film’s public screenings and the discussions it sparked coincided with the phasing-out of weekly daycare centres and the regulation of night work for pregnant women and mothers of children under one year of age. The danger of emotional deprivation among children was also cited as a reason for the post-November dissolution of state-run daycare centres, the consequences of which we continue to grapple with to this day.

biography

Kurt Goldberger (1919–2004) was the director of scientific, popular science, and socially critical films. He began his career as a director while in exile in Britain during World War II. His films are characterized by technical ingenuity and an interest in emerging scientific fields. Together with Svatopluk Malý, the cinematographer of Children Without Love (1963), he began filming documentaries in operating rooms in the mid-1950s. Before his second emigration following August 1968, he made Knihy lidských osudů (The Books of Human Destinies, 1967) about Nazi and Communist violence against Czech Jews.