Daniel:

When I was about 8 years old, I went on one of the famous Plas bike rides with my grandparents. I don’t remember exactly where we went and there are different stories about how it went, but we ended up on a bench somewhere to rest. I had heard a joke from Aaron and this was my chance to tell it. Grandpa was sitting on the bench unsuspectingly when I asked him if I could hold his watch for a moment. He reluctantly handed over his watch and while I threw it into the air with my poor eye-hand coordination I shouted: “Look grandpa! Time flies!”

This was step 1 of this brilliant prank. Step 2 was to catch the watch and return it to the victim in good condition. This story probably wouldn’t have made it to this point if this had actually worked. Instead of catching him, the watch ended up on the hard 80s bench and on the floor. Time clearly didn’t fly anymore. I don’t remember exactly how grandpa reacted, but what I do know is that this moment was often replayed in the years that followed.

Almost 20 years later I had made a film about the Zitoony family. Despite the amount of work, this was a very nice process and it was nice to have an end result that was still cool to look back on for years to come. Because I had the equipment and programs to do this at that time, I wondered what my next project could be. I soon ended up with grandpa and grandma. The things they had experienced and the stories they told about it were of course legendary and it would be a shame to lose those memories.

That’s how I ended up with my uncles asking if they could interview grandpa and grandma about their lives. I would then stick them together so that everyone could see them. No sooner said than done, you might say, but after a vigorous start, in which I had actually only put together an intro and a few sentences from grandpa, this turned out to be quite a job. Other things came up and the project faded into the background. In the years that followed, I occasionally came across the interviews or the work file again and I thought that we should continue. I would then get back on the phone with the uncles to see if they could pick up the interviews again, because, well, before you know it, it was too late. But I never really managed to seriously breathe new life into it.

When grandpa died I really beat myself up about it. Now we were too late. Until I realized in 2023 that I had to try again. Grandma was still there, we still had some material from 2011, who knows, maybe it would still work. I asked the uncles again and we sat down to see what was still needed. I then decided that it couldn’t be about their entire lives, but that I would focus on their family of origin up to the moment they got married. And so it happened. They asked grandma some more questions and I started puzzling.

In the end it became a film of 100 minutes, as you can guess with the title “Time Flies”, in which we hear grandpa and grandma about their origins and their early years. In addition, I have tried to color this a bit with images from that time and some background music. In between the stories you will see images of Groningen from 1919, but also photos of grandpa and grandma and their family.

Of course, Grandma published her beautiful book a few years ago, so you will recognize many of them, but I hope you enjoy it anyway and look back at it every now and then in honor of our wonderful grandpa and grandma.

Enjoy!