Jolly Juggle

Somewhere on a street in Cape Town, street children wake up and set off on their journey. The goal is a circus workshop for street children. Idun Hübner from Kiel, born and raised in South Africa herself, practices juggling, unicycling and acrobatics with the children. Starting with the small successes and failures during rehearsals and performances, the film tells unobtrusively and sensitively about the conditions in which the participants Vernan, Louise, Samantha, Boeta and the other children of this group live in today's South Africa.
About their families, life on the street and their daily routine in the day center, where they find refuge during the day. The film shows the sadness and abandonment of the children and yet in all this desolation it discovers their strengths and their will to be ordinary children. The joyfulness at the rehearsals, their pride and self-confidence at the performances reveal the story.
(Catalog, Nordic Film Days)

Kieler Nachrichten, 11/03/2001

Northern Lights in German Cinema
Quinka F. Stoehr from Kiel is represented in the thematic group World Views with an unspectacular, yet touching documentary: For Jolly Juggle- Street Children from Cape Town on Stage, she accompanied Idun Hübner, who also lives in Kiel and was born in South Africa, for a workshop with black kids in her home country. In 45 minutes, Stoehr spares common clichés of misery and instead shows people who try to make the best of their lives according to their own possibilities.

Lübecker Nachrichten, 11/06/2001

A convincing film forum
The film ("The Trauma Vietnam) formed a program focus on the topic of World Views with other strong documentaries such as "Jolly Juggle - Street Children from Cape Town on Stage", "Curonian Spit" or "The Native". The latter showed in sensitive images a (...) politically fractured landscape.

infomedia newsletter 11/ 2001

The Kiel based documentary filmmaker Quinka Stoehr observes a circus project with street kids in a Cape Town day center in her film "Jolly Juggle - Street Children from Cape Town on Stage". Idun Hübner of Kiel, who was born and raised in South Africa herself, leads this project. Beyond the practice of juggling and simple acrobatics, attention and care for the children also functions as social group therapy and mental therapy, and does so with success. A number of the children wished to live with a family again after these annual summer workshops and have been successfully placed in new homes. The film, together with its little heroes, visits their original families or the people who take care of the street children even more closely, and thus gently allows an idea of how it was possible for the fates of the children to leave poverty behind.