Cinema of Germany

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Cinema of Germany
Max Schreck as Count Orlok in the 1922 film Nosferatu. Critic and historian Kim Newman declared it as a film that set the template for the genre of horror film.[1]
No. of screens4,803 (2017)[2]
 • Per capita6.2 per 100,000 (2011)[3]
Main distributorsWarner (19.5%)
Walt Disney (11.5%)
Sony Pictures (11.1%)[4]
Produced feature films (2011)[5]
Fictional128 (60.4%)
Animated5 (2.4%)
Documentary79 (37.3%)
Number of admissions (2017)[2]
Total122,305,182
 • Per capita1.48 (2017)
National films28,300,000 (23.1%)
Gross box office (2017)[2]
Total€1.06 billion

The

early Hollywood.[6][7]

German movies and German artists earned 230 Oscar nominations and 54 Oscar wins.

Germany witnessed major changes to its identity during the 20th and 21st century. Those changes determined the periodisation of national cinema into a succession of distinct eras and movements.[8]

History

1895–1918 German Empire

The Berlin Wintergarten theatre, here in 1940, was the site of the first cinema screening ever, with 8 short films presented by the Skladanowsky brothers on 1 November 1895.

The history of cinema in Germany can be traced back to the years shortly after the medium's birth. On 1 November 1895,

Cinematographe in Paris on 28 December of the same year, a performance that Max Skladanowsky attended and at which he was able to ascertain that the Cinematographe was technically superior to his Bioscop. Other German film pioneers included the Berliners Oskar Messter and Max Gliewe, two of several individuals who independently in 1896 first used a Geneva drive (which allows the film to be advanced intermittently one frame at a time) in a projector, and the cinematographer Guido Seeber
.

In its earliest days, the cinematograph was perceived as an attraction for upper class audiences, but the novelty of moving pictures did not last long. Soon, trivial short films were being shown as fairground attractions aimed at the working class and lower-middle class. The booths in which these films were shown were known in Germany somewhat disparagingly as Kintopps. Film-makers with an artistic bent attempted to counter this view of cinema with longer films based on literary models, and the first German "artistic" films began to be produced from around 1910, an example being the Edgar Allan Poe adaptation The Student of Prague (1913) which was co-directed by Paul Wegener and Stellan Rye, photographed by Guido Seeber and starring actors from Max Reinhardt's company.

The Babelsberg Studio near Berlin was the first large-scale film studio in the world (founded 1912) and the forerunner to Hollywood. It still produces global blockbusters every year.

Early film theorists in Germany began to write about the significance of Schaulust, or "visual pleasure", for the audience, including the

expressionist
films that were produced shortly after the First World War.

Cinemas themselves began to be established landmarks in the years immediately before World War I. Before this, German filmmakers would tour with their works, travelling from fairground to fairground. The earliest ongoing cinemas were set up in cafes and pubs by owners who saw a way of attracting more customers. The storefront cinema was called a Kientopp, and this is where films were viewed for the most part before the First World War broke out.[11] The first standalone, dedicated cinema in Germany was opened in Mannheim in 1906, and by 1910, there were over 1000 cinemas operating in Germany.[11] Henny Porten and Asta Nielsen (the latter originally from Denmark) were the first major film stars in Germany.[12]

Prior to 1914, however, many foreign films were imported. In the era of the

film serials, especially in the genre of mystery films, which is where the director Fritz Lang
began his illustrious career.

The outbreak of

Universum Film AG
(UFA), which was partly a reaction to the very effective use that the Allied Powers had found for the new medium for the purpose of propaganda. Under the aegis of the military, so-called Vaterland films were produced, which equalled the Allies' films in the matter of propaganda and disparagement of the enemy. Audiences however did not care to swallow the patriotic medicine without the accompanying sugar of the light-entertainment films which, consequently, Ufa also promoted. The German film industry soon became the largest in Europe.

1918–1933 Weimar Republic

Berlin-Tempelhof
, 1920

The German film industry, which was protected during the war by the ban on foreign films import, became exposed at the end of the war to the international film industry while having to face an embargo, this time on its own films. Many countries banned the import of German films and audiences themselves were resisting anything that was "German".

nationalist industrialist and newspaper owner Alfred Hugenberg in 1927.[15]

Metropolis (1927), directed by Fritz Lang, first film to be inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register

Nevertheless, the German film industry enjoyed an unprecedented development – during the 14 years which comprise the Weimar period, an average of 250 film were being produced each year, a total of 3,500 full-feature films.[13] Apart from UFA, about 230 film companies were active in Berlin alone. This industry was attracting producers and directors from all over Europe. The fact that the films were silent and language was not a factor, enabled even foreign actors, like the Danish film star Asta Nielsen or the American Louise Brooks, to be hired even for leading roles. This period can also be noted for new technological developments in film making and experimentation in set design and lighting, led by UFA. Babelsberg Studio, which was incorporated into UFA, expanded massively and gave the German film industry a highly developed infrastructure. Babelsberg remained the centre of German filmmaking for many years, became the largest film studio in Europe and produced most of the films in this "golden era" of German cinema.[15] In essence it was "the German equivalent to Hollywood".[16]

Films about an exaggerated version of Japanese culture that included "geishas, samurai, and Shinto shrines" were popular in Germany during this era.[17]

Due to the unstable economic condition and in an attempt to deal with modest production budgets, filmmakers were trying to reach the largest audience possible and in that, to maximize their revenues. This led to films being made in a vast array of genres and styles.[13]

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), directed by Robert Wiene, a major influence on film noir[18]

One of the main film genres associated with the Weimar Republic cinema is

horror films and film noir and in the works of European directors such as Jean Cocteau and Ingmar Bergman.[19]

Despite its significance, expressionist cinema was not the dominant genre of this era.[19] Many other genres such as period dramas, melodramas, romantic comedies, and films of social and political nature, were much more prevalent and definitely more popular.

The "master" of period-dramas was undoubtedly

King Henry VIII
's second wife. In these films, Lubitsch presented prominent historic personalities who are caught up by their weaknesses and petty urges and thus, ironically, become responsible for huge historical events. Despite modest budgets, his films included extravagant scenes which were meant to appeal to a wide audience and insure a wide international distribution.

As the genre of expressionism began to diminish, the genre of the

The Loves of Jeanne Ney (1927). Pabst is also credited with innovations in film editing, such as reversing the angle of the camera or cutting between two camera angles, which enhanced film continuity and later became standards of the industry.[15]

Pabst is also identified with another genre which branched from the New Objectivity – that of social and political films. These filmmakers dared to confront sensitive and controversial social issues which engaged the public in those days; such as

Ritual Murder (1919) by Jewish film producer Max Nivelli came to the screen. This film was the first to make the German public aware of the consequences of anti-Semitism and xenophobia. It portrayed a "pogrom" which is carried out against the Jewish inhabitants of a village in Tsarist Russia. In the background, a love story also evolves between a young Russian student and the daughter of the leader of the Jewish community, something that was considered a taboo at the time. Later on, in an attempt to reflect the rapidly growing anti-Semitic atmosphere, Oswald confronted the same issue with his film Dreyfus (1930), which portrayed the 1894 political scandal of the "Dreyfus affair
", which until today remains one of the most striking examples of miscarriage of justice and blatant anti-Semitism.

Marlene Dietrich, one of the biggest stars in German cinema history, was also a vocal figure in terms of politics.[22]

The polarised politics of the

Bolshevik films of that era.[23]

Another important film genre of the Weimar years was the Kammerspiel or "chamber drama", which was borrowed from the theater and developed by stage director, who would later become a film producer and director himself, Max Reinhardt. This style was in many ways a reaction against the spectacle of expressionism and thus tended to revolve around ordinary people from the lower-middle-class. Films of this genre were often called "instinct" films because they emphasized the impulses and intimate psychology of the characters. The sets were kept to a minimum and there was abundant use of camera movements to add complexity to the rather intimate and simple spaces. Associated with this particular style is also screenwriter Carl Mayer and films such as Murnau's Last Laugh (1924).

Charlotte Reiniger, the oldest surviving animated feature film and first use of a multiplane camera

Nature films, a genre referred to as Bergfilm, also became popular. Most known in this category are the films by director Arnold Fanck, in which individuals were shown battling against nature in the mountains. Animators and directors of experimental films such as; Lotte Reiniger, Oskar Fischinger and Walter Ruttmann, were also very active in Germany in the 1920s. Ruttman's experimental documentary Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927) epitomised the energy of 1920s Berlin.

Fritz Lang, director of important German expressionist films like M from 1931, an indispensable influence on modern crime and thriller fiction[24][25][26]

The arrival of sound at the very end of the 1920s, produced a final artistic flourish of German film before the collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1933. As early as 1918, three inventors came up with the

communist film Kuhle Wampe
(1932), which was banned soon after its release.

In addition to developments in the industry itself, the Weimar period saw the birth of film criticism as a serious discipline whose practitioners included Rudolf Arnheim in Die Weltbühne and in Film als Kunst (1932), Béla Balázs in Der Sichtbare Mensch (1924), Siegfried Kracauer in the Frankfurter Zeitung, and Lotte H. Eisner in the Filmkurier.

1933–1945 Nazi Germany

The uncertain economic and political situation in Weimar Germany had already led to a number of film-makers and performers leaving the country, primarily for the United States; Ernst Lubitsch moved to Hollywood as early as 1923, the Hungarian-born

concentration camp
.

Berlin-Steglitz, an Art Deco
style movie theater opened in 1928

Within weeks of the

Propaganda ministry
, and all those employed in the industry had to be members of the Reichsfachschaft Film. "Non-Aryan" film professionals and those whose politics or personal life were unacceptable to the Nazis were excluded from the Reichsfachschaft and thus denied employment in the industry. Some 3,000 individuals were affected by this employment ban. In addition, as journalists were also organised as a division of the Propaganda Ministry, Goebbels was able to abolish film criticism in 1936 and replace it with Filmbeobachtung (film observation); journalists could only report on the content of a film, not offer judgement on its artistic or other worth.

Leni Riefenstahl was a major director in Nazi Germany. Her film Olympia from 1938 about the 1936 Summer Olympics had a major impact on modern sports coverage[28][29]

With the German film industry now effectively an arm of the

Johann Strauß comic operetta. Titanic (1943) was another big-budget epic that arguably inspired other films about the ill-fated ocean liner.[31] The importance of the cinema as a tool of the state, both for its propaganda value and its ability to keep the populace entertained, can be seen in the filming history of Veit Harlan's Kolberg
(1945), the most expensive film of the Nazi era, for the shooting of which tens of thousands of soldiers were diverted from their military positions to appear as extras.

Despite the emigration of many film-makers and the political restrictions, the period was not without technical and aesthetic innovations, the introduction of

Nuremberg Rally, and Olympia (1938), documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics
, pioneered techniques of camera movement and editing that have influenced many later films. Both films, particularly Triumph of the Will, remain highly controversial, as their aesthetic merit is inseparable from their propagandising of Nazi ideals.

1945–1989 East Germany

East German cinema initially profited from the fact that much of the country's film infrastructure, notably the former UFA studios, lay in the

Progress Film, had also been established as a similar monopoly for domestic film distribution, its principal "competition" being Sovexportfilm, which handled distribution of Soviet films.[36]

Academy Award

In total, DEFA produced some 900 feature films during its existence as well as around 800 animated films and over 3000 documentaries and short films.

The Sons of the Great Mother Bear (1966)[41] in which, in contrast to the typical American western, the heroes tended to be Native Americans. Many of these genre films were co-productions with other Warsaw Pact
countries.

Notable non-genre films produced by DEFA include Wolfgang Staudte's adaptation of Heinrich Mann's Der Untertan (1951); Konrad Wolf's Der geteilte Himmel (Divided Heaven) (1964), an adaptation of Christa Wolf's novel; Frank Beyer's adaptation of Jurek Becker's Jacob the Liar (1975), the only East German film to be nominated for an Oscar;[42] The Legend of Paul and Paula (1973), directed by Heiner Carow from Ulrich Plenzdorf's novel; and Solo Sunny (1980), again the work of Konrad Wolf.

However, film-making in the GDR was always constrained and oriented by the political situation in the country at any given time.

Traces of Stones (1966) which was pulled from distribution after three days, not because it was antipathetic to communist principles, but because it showed that such principles, which it fostered, were not put into practice at all times in East Germany.[44] The huge box-office hit The Legend of Paul and Paula was initially threatened with a distribution ban because of its satirical elements and supposedly only allowed a release on the say-so of Party General Secretary Erich Honecker.[citation needed
]

In the late 1970s, numerous film-makers left the GDR for the West as a result of restrictions on their work, among them director

expatriation of socially critical singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann and had had their ability to work restricted as a result.[45]

In the final years of the GDR, the availability of television and the programming and films on television broadcasts reaching into the GDR via the uncontrollable airwaves, reduced the influence of DEFA productions, although its continuing role in producing shows for East German television channel remained.[

intellectual property rights were handed to the charitable DEFA-Stiftung (DEFA Foundation) which exploits these rights in conjunction with a series of private companies, especially the quickly privatized Progress Film GmbH, which has issued several East German films with English subtitles since the mid-1990s.[34][36]

1945–1989 West Germany

1945–1960 Reconstruction

The occupation and reconstruction of Germany by the

MPAA
.

Amidst the devastation of the

Stunde Null year of 1945 cinema attendance was unsurprisingly down to a fraction of its wartime heights, but already by the end of the decade it had reached levels that exceeded the pre-war period.[30] For the first time in many years, German audiences had free access to cinema from around the world and in this period the films of Charlie Chaplin remained popular, as were melodramas from the United States. Nonetheless, the share of the film market for German films in this period and into the 1950s remained relatively large, taking up some 40 percent of the total market. American films took up around 30 percent of the market despite having around twice as many films in distribution as the German industry in the same time frame.[46]

Many of the German films of the immediate post-war period can be characterised as belonging to the genre of the

Draußen vor der Tür
.

Romy Schneider, an early star of the Heimatfilm

Despite the advent of a regular television service in the Federal Republic in 1952, cinema attendances continued to grow through much of the 1950s, reaching a peak of 817.5 million visits in 1956.[30] The majority of the films of this period set out to do no more than entertain the audience and had few pretensions to artistry or active engagement with social issues. The defining genre of the period was arguably the Heimatfilm ("homeland film"), in which morally simplistic tales of love and family were played out in a rural setting, often in the mountains of Bavaria, Austria or Switzerland. In their day Heimatfilms were of little interest to more scholarly film critics, but in recent years they have been the subject of study in relation to what they say about the culture of West Germany in the years of the Wirtschaftswunder. Other film genres typical of this period were adaptations of operettas, hospital melodramas, comedies and musicals. Many films were remakes of earlier Ufa productions.

Rearmament and the founding of the Bundeswehr in 1955 brought with it a wave of war films which tended to depict the ordinary German soldiers of World War II as brave and apolitical.[47] The Israeli historian Omer Bartov wrote that German films of the 1950s showed the average German soldier as a heroic victim: noble, tough, brave, honourable, and patriotic while fighting hard in a senseless war for a regime that he did not care for.[48] The 08/15 film trilogy of 1954–55 concerns a sensitive young German soldier who would rather play the piano than fight, and who fights on the Eastern Front without understanding why; however, no mention is made of the genocidal aspects of Germany's war in East.[47] The last of the 08/15 films ends with Germany occupied by a gang of American soldiers portrayed as bubble-gum chewing, slack-jawed morons and uncultured louts, totally inferior in every respect to the heroic German soldiers shown in the 08/15 films.[47] The only exception is the Jewish American officer, who is shown as both hyper-intelligent and very unscrupulous, which Bartov noted seems to imply that the real tragedy of World War II was the Nazis did not get a chance to exterminate all of the Jews, who have now returned with Germany's defeat to once more exploit the German people.[47]

In

Des Teufels General (The Devil's General) of 1954, a Luftwaffe general named Harras loosely modeled after Ernst Udet, appears at first to be cynical fool, but turns out to an anti-Nazi who is secretly sabotaging the German war effort by designing faulty planes.[51] Bartov commented that in this film, the German officer corps is shown as a group of fundamentally noble and civilized men who happened to be serving an evil regime made up of a small gang of gangsterish misfits totally unrepresentative of German society, which served to exculpate both the officer corps and by extension Germany society.[52] Bartov wrote that no German film of the 1950s showed the deep commitment felt by many German soldiers to National Socialism, the utter ruthless way the German Army fought the war and the mindless nihilist brutality of the later Wehrmacht.[53] Bartov wrote that German film-makers liked to show the heroic last stand of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, but none has so far showed the 6th Army's massive co-operation with the Einsatzgruppen in murdering Soviet Jews in 1941.[54]

Even though there are countless

Krimis (abbreviation for the German term "Kriminalfilm" (or "Kriminalroman"). Other Edgar Wallace adaptations in a similar style were made by the Germans Artur Brauner and Kurt Ulrich, and the British producer Harry Alan Towers
.

The international significance of the West German film industry of the 1950s could no longer measure up to that of France, Italy, or Japan. German films were only rarely distributed internationally as they were perceived as provincial. International co-productions of the kind which were becoming common in France and Italy tended to be rejected by German producers (Schneider 1990:43). However a few German films and film-makers did achieve international recognition at this time, among them Bernhard Wicki's Oscar-nominated Die Brücke (The Bridge) (1959), and the actresses Hildegard Knef and Romy Schneider.

1960–1970 cinema in crisis

Klaus Kinski

In the late 1950s, the growth in cinema attendance of the preceding decade first stagnated and then went into freefall throughout the 1960s. By 1969 West German cinema attendance at 172.2 million visits per year was less than a quarter of its 1956 post-war peak.[30] As a consequence of this, numerous German production and distribution companies went out of business in the 1950s and 1960s and cinemas across the Federal Republic closed their doors; the number of screens in West Germany almost halved between the beginning and the end of the decade.[citation needed]

Initially, the crisis was perceived as a problem of overproduction. Consequently, the German film industry cut back on production. 123 German movies were produced in 1955, only 65 in 1965. However, many German film companies followed the 1960s trends of

Eurospy
films with films shot in those nations or in Yugoslavia that featured German actors in the casts.

The roots of the problem lay deeper in changing economic and social circumstances. Average incomes in the Federal Republic rose sharply and this opened up alternative leisure activities to compete with cinema-going. At this time too, television was developing into a mass medium that could compete with the cinema. In 1953 there were only 1,000,000 sets in West Germany; by 1962 there were 7 million (Connor 1990:49) (Hoffman 1990:69).

The majority of films produced in the Federal Republic in the 1960s were genre works:

Doctor Mabuse
in a series of several films of the early 1960s.

At the end of the 1960s

exploitation films as Schulmädchen-Report
(Schoolgirl Report) (1970) and its successors were produced into the 1970s. Such movies were commercially successful and often enjoyed international distribution, but won little acclaim from critics.

1960–1980 New German Cinema

In the 1960s more than three-quarters of the regular cinema audience were lost as consequence of the rising popularity of TV sets at home. As a reaction to the artistic and economic stagnation of German cinema, a group of young film-makers issued the

Jean-Marie Straub, Wim Wenders, Werner Schroeter and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg in their rejection of the existing German film industry and their determination to build a new cinema founded on artistic and social measures rather than commercial success. Most of these directors organized themselves in, or partially co-operated with, the film production and distribution company Filmverlag der Autoren established in 1971, which throughout the 1970s brought forth a number of critically acclaimed films. Rosa von Praunheim, who formed the German lesbian and gay movement with his film It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives (1971), also plays an important role.[55]

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema movement

Despite the foundation of the Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film (Young German Film Committee) in 1965, set up under the auspices of the

Federal Ministry of the Interior to support new German films financially, the directors of this New German Cinema were consequently often dependent on money from television. Young filmmakers had the opportunity to test their mettle in such programmes as the stand-alone drama and documentary series Das kleine Fernsehspiel (The Little TV Play) or the television films of the crime series Tatort
. However, the broadcasters sought TV premieres for the films which they had supported financially, with theatrical showings only occurring later. As a consequence, such films tended to be unsuccessful at the box office.

This situation changed after 1974 when the Film-Fernseh-Abkommen (Film and Television Accord) was agreed between the Federal Republic's main broadcasters, ARD and ZDF, and the German Federal Film Board (a government body created in 1968 to support film-making in Germany).[56] This accord, which has been repeatedly extended up to the present day, provides for the television companies to make available an annual sum to support the production of films which are suitable for both theatrical distribution and television presentation. (The amount of money provided by the public broadcasters has varied between 4.5 and 12.94 million euros per year. Under the terms of the accord, films produced using these funds can only be screened on television 24 months after their theatrical release. They may appear on video or DVD no sooner than six months after cinema release. Nevertheless, the New German Cinema found it difficult to attract a large domestic or international audience.

The socially critical films of the New German Cinema strove to delineate themselves from what had gone before and the works of

auteur film-makers such as Kluge and Fassbinder are examples of this, although Fassbinder in his use of stars from German cinema history also sought a reconciliation between the new cinema and the old. In addition, a distinction is sometimes drawn between the avantgarde "Young German Cinema" of the 1960s and the more accessible "New German Cinema" of the 1970s. For their influences the new generation of film-makers looked to Italian neorealism, the French Nouvelle Vague and the British New Wave but combined this eclectically with references to the well-established genres of Hollywood cinema. The New German Cinema dealt with contemporary German social problems in a direct way; the Nazi past, the plight of the Gastarbeiter ("guest workers"), and modern social developments, were all subjects prominent in New German Cinema films.[57]

Films such as Kluge's

Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The New German Cinema also allowed for female directors to come to the fore and for the development of a feminist cinema which encompassed the works of directors such as Margarethe von Trotta, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Jutta Brückner, Helke Sander and Cristina Perincioli
.

German production companies have been quite commonly involved in expensive French and Italian productions from

Spaghetti Westerns
to French comic book adaptations.

1980–1989 popular productions

Bernd Eichinger "star" at the Boulevard of Stars in Berlin

Having achieved some of its goals, among them the establishment of state funding for the film industry and renewed international recognition for German films, the New German Cinema had begun to show signs of fatigue by the 1980s, even though many of its proponents continued to enjoy individual success.

Among the commercial successes for German films of the 1980s were the Otto film series beginning in 1985 starring comedian

Loriot
.

Away from the mainstream, the splatter film director Jörg Buttgereit came to prominence in the 1980s. The development of arthouse cinemas (Programmkinos) from the 1970s onwards provided a venue for the works of less mainstream film-makers like Herbert Achternbusch, Hark Bohm, Dominik Graf, Oliver Herbrich, Rosa von Praunheim or Christoph Schlingensief.

From the mid-1980s the spread of

RTL Television provided new competition for theatrical film distribution. Cinema attendance, having rallied slightly in the late 1970s after an all-time low of 115.1 million visits in 1976, dropped sharply again from the mid-1980s to end at just 101.6 million visits in 1989.[30]
However, the availability of a back catalogue of films on video also allowed for a different relationship between the viewer and an individual film, while private TV channels brought new money into the film industry and provided a launch pad from which new talent could later move into film.

1990–Modern Germany

John Rabe (2009), directed by Florian Gallenberger, filming on location in Shanghai harbour
Berlin returned to being the capital of the German film industry since the German reunification in 1990.[58]

Today's biggest German production studios include

Good Bye Lenin! by Wolfgang Becker, Head-On by Fatih Akin, Perfume by Tom Tykwer and The Lives of Others by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, have arguably managed to recapture a provocative and innovative nature. Movies like The Baader Meinhof Complex produced by Bernd Eichinger
achieved some popular success.

Notable directors working in German currently include

.

Internationally, German filmmakers such as Roland Emmerich or Wolfgang Petersen or Uwe Boll built successful careers as directors and producers. Hans Zimmer, a film composer, has become one of the world's most acclaimed producers of movie scores. Michael Ballhaus became a renowned cinematographer.

Germany has a long tradition of cooperation with the European-based film industry, which started as early as during the 1960s. Since 1990 the number of international projects financed and co-produced by German filmmakers has expanded.

The new millennium since 2000 has seen a general resurgence of the German film industry, with a higher output and improved returns at the German box office.

The collapse of the GDR had a large effect on the German cinema industry. The viewer count increased with the new population's access to western movies. The movies produced in the United States were the most popular, due to the fact that the market was dominated by them and the production was more advanced than Germany's. Some other genres that were popular consisted of Romantic Comedies, and Social Commentaries. Wolfgang Petersen and Roland Emmerich both established international success.

Internationally, German productions are benefitting from streaming. Their global market share is rising.[59] Domestically, the German movies improved their market share of about 16% in 1996 to around 30% in 2021.,[60] so the movie culture is partly recognized to be underfunded, problem laden and rather inward looking.

Film funding

The main production incentive provided by governmental authorities is the Deutscher Filmförderfonds (DFFF) (German Federal Film Fund). The DFFF is a grant given by the Staatsministerin für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media). To receive the grant a producer has to fulfill different requirements including a cultural eligibility test. The fund offers 50 million euros a year to film producers and or co-producers and grants can amount to up to 20% of the approved German production costs. At least 25% the production costs must be spent in Germany, or only 20%, if the production costs are higher than 20 million euros. The DFFF has been established in 2007 and supported projects in all categories and genres.

In 2015, the Deutsche Filmförderungsfond was reduced from 60 million euros to 50 million euros. To compensate, Finance minister Gabriel announced that the difference will be made up from the budget of the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action).[61][62] For the first time in Germany high-profile tv series and digital filmmaking will be funded at a federal level in the same manner as feature films.[63] Funding is also increasingly flowing to international co-productions.

In 1979, the German states also began to establish funding institutions, often with the intention of supporting their own production locations. Today, film funding by the federal states makes up the largest share of film funding in Germany. A total of more than 200 million euros in grants are distributed annually, with an upward trend.

The history of film funding began in Germany with the founding of the UFA GmbH (1917), which was to produce pro-German propaganda films - equipped with funds from industry and banks. During the period of National Socialism (1933-1945), the state indirectly promoted the financing of film projects by establishing the Filmkreditbank GmbH (FKB) (Film Credit Bank).

After the end of World War II, many feature films were initially supported by federal guarantees. However, film funding in its current form did not develop until the 1950s, when television began to supplant motion pictures. In 1967, a film funding law was passed for the first time. The Berlin-based Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA) (Film Funding Agency) was the first major funding institution to be founded in 1968.

Critics accuse film funding in Germany of being institutionally fragmented, making it virtually impossible to coordinate all measures, which would ultimately benefit the quality of productions. They also say that a blanket distribution of grants stifles the incentive to produce films that recoup their production costs.

Film funding institutions

Film funding in Germany is provided, among others, by the following institutions:

Federal

  • Deutscher Filmförderfonds (DFFF) (German Federal Film Fund) of the Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media)
  • Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA) (Film Funding Agency), since 1968
  • Kuratorium junger deutscher Film (Board of Trustees for Young German Film)

Regional

Lokal:

Festival

The Berlin International Film Festival, also known as Berlinale

The Berlin International Film Festival, also called Berlinale, is one of the world's leading film festivals and most reputable media events.[64] It is held in Berlin, Germany.[65] Founded in West Berlin in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With 274,000 tickets sold and 487,000 admissions it is considered the largest publicly attended film festival worldwide.[66][67] Up to 400 films are shown in several sections, representing a comprehensive array of the cinematic world. Around twenty films compete for the awards called the Golden and Silver Bears. Since 2001 the director of the festival has been Dieter Kosslick.[68][69]

The festival, the EFM and other satellite events are attended by around 20,000 professionals from over 130 countries.[70] More than 4200 journalists are responsible for the media exposure in over 110 countries.[71] At high-profile feature film premieres, movie stars and celebrities are present at the red carpet.[72]

German Film Academy

The Deutsche Filmakademie was founded in 2003 in Berlin and aims to provide native filmmakers a forum for discussion and a way to promote the reputation of German cinema through publications, presentations, discussions and regular promotion of the subject in the schools.

Awards

Since 2005, the winners of the

Deutscher Filmpreis
, also known as the Lolas are elected by the members of the Deutsche Filmakademie. With a cash prize of three million euros it is the most highly endowed German cultural award.

Year English title Original title Director(s)
2005 Go for Zucker Alles auf Zucker! Dani Levy
2006 The Lives of Others Das Leben der Anderen Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
2007
Four Minutes
Vier Minuten
Chris Kraus
2008 The Edge of Heaven Auf der anderen Seite
Fatih Akın
2009 John Rabe John Rabe Florian Gallenberger
2010 The White Ribbon Das weiße Band Michael Haneke
2011 Vincent Wants to Sea Vincent will Meer Ralf Huettner
2012 Stopped on Track Halt auf freier Strecke Andreas Dresen
2013 A Coffee in Berlin Oh Boy Jan-Ole Gerster
2014 Home from Home Die andere Heimat Edgar Reitz
2015 Victoria Victoria Sebastian Schipper
2016 The People vs. Fritz Bauer Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer Lars Kraume

Film schools

University of Television and Film Munich

Several institutions, both government run and private, provide formal education in various aspects of filmmaking.

Personalities

See also

References

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Further reading

External links