Heidi

Heidi is a 1965 Austrian family film directed by Werner Jacobs and starring Eva Maria Singhammer, Michaela May and Jan Koester. It is an adaptation of Johanna Spyri's 1880 novel of the same title. The film's sets were designed by the art directors Fritz Jüptner-Jonstorff and Hans Zehetner. It was shot in Eastmancolor. Plot summary The eight-year-old child, Heidi (Eva Maria Singhammer), lives with her grandfather, Alp-Oehi (Gustav Knuth), in a cottage in the Swiss Alps and enjoys spending time in the mountains with Peter, her friend the goatherd (Jan Koester), who believes that one has to choose between either living in the Alps and herding goats or learning to read. The village parson (Rudolph Prack) calls in on Alp-Oehi. He asks him to come to the village along with Heidi to attend the installation of the new church bell. A festival is held around the installation of the bell. Traditionally, the children help hoist up the new bell, and Heidi should be part of the event. In addition, she could make friends with the children of the village, because soon she would start going to school in the village, anyway. The child should have already been enrolled in school by law. Alp-Oehi protests: Heidi cannot go to school every day in the winter while facing snow storms and the cold. The parson agrees and suggests that Alp-Oehi could return and live in the village. However, Alp-Oehi is not thrilled because he is at odds with the villagers. In the past, they accused him of being responsible for a fire which damaged many houses and the church tower. But, actually, Alp-Oehi was innocent and even lost his only son, Heidi's father, while the latter was fighting the fire. Shortly thereafter, Heidi's mother died from grief over the loss. Aunt Dete (Lotte Ledl), the sister of Heidi's mother, took initially care of the child. However, she entrusted her to the old man when she got a job in Frankfurt in Germany.