Heimat is a series of films written and directed by Edgar Reitz about life in Germany from the 1840s to 2000 through the eyes of a family from the Hunsrück area of the Rhineland-Palatinate. The family's personal and domestic life is set against the backdrop of wider social and political events. The combined length of the 5 films – broken into 32 episodes – is 59 hours and 32 minutes, making it one of the longest series of feature-length films in cinema history. The title Heimat () is a German word, often translated as "homeland" or "home place", but it has been alleged that the word has no true English equivalent. Usage has come to include that of an ironic reference to the film genre known as Heimatfilm which was popular in Germany in the 1950s. Heimat films were characterised by rural settings, sentimental tone and simplistic morality. Aesthetically, the series is notable for the frequent switching between colour and black-and-white film to convey different emotional states. In 1987 it won a BAFTA for "Foreign Television Programme". The first "Heimat" film covered the years 1918 to 1982, and was released in 1984. It was followed by "Die Zweite Heimat" in 1993 that is set during the 1960s. In 2003, a direct sequel to both was released, with lead actors from both films returning as their characters. In 2006 a film was created by editing unused footage and outtakes together, along with newly filmed material to produce, "Heimat Fragments". A prequel film to the original was released in 2013. Background Tales from the Hunsrück Villages Before creating the Heimat series, Edgar Reitz produced a documentary during 1980–81 about people from his home region, the Hunsrück, where he later set the Heimat series. In Geschichten aus den Hunsrückdörfern () he showed people who had not left the region, unlike Heimats theme of leaving home. This documentary is not considered to be part of the core Heimat series but set the stage for the work to come a few years later. Autobiographical elements Berkeley film and media professor Anton Kaes argued that auteur film-maker Reitz's trilogy was autobiographical. Reitz and Paul Simon, his fictional character in Heimat, had fathers who were skilled craftsmen. Edgar Reitz was born in 1932 and Paul Simon in 1898 in Hunsrück. They grew up there, then left when they were in their twenties and returned in their fifties.