Work and film

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Arbeit Und Film (1974 to 1984) was an independent film group in Frankfurt am Main that screened and produced documentaries about labor disputes . Its members included filmmakers, students, workers and trainees. In the tradition of political “workers' films” of the 1970s, it pursued the goal of developing and using “film as a weapon in industrial action”.

history

Founded work and film of the filmmaker Enzio Edschmid, the student Bina Elisabeth Mohn, the film students Gernot Steinweg and trainees Schlosserin Petra Vasile.

Under the motto "Make experiences, document them on film, learn from each other", members of the group showed workers' films in companies, as well as at trade union meetings and in general educational work. In addition, the group made its own 16mm films in cooperation with works councils and union shop stewards.

Work and Film worked on the principle of the London film group Cinema Action , which had started in 1968 to show a French documentary about the politically influenced struggle of the Renault workers in May 1968 at trade unionists in Great Britain . From 1969 onwards, Cinema Action produced its own documentaries in collaboration with English workers with the aim of allowing those directly affected to have their say without comment. The aim was to analyze labor disputes on film in order to encourage other unions and political groups to become active themselves in the future. (Quoted from the British Film Institute ). Gernot Steinweg accompanied the beginnings of Cinema Action from 1969 to 1971, brought its basic idea to Germany and introduced it into the theoretical debate of the students at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb) .

Arbeit und Film spoke of the "intervening" - as opposed to the "observing" workers' film - without letting themselves be captured by party politics or trade unions. The members of the group worked on a voluntary basis, the films were financed by donations and sales of license rights.

In 1977, her film, Vigilant Day and Night, received the German Film Critics ' Award in the sponsorship award from the Association of German Film Critics . In 1978 the group was registered in the association register. From 1980 to 1984 Gernot Steinweg and Bernd Krieg continued the work in the form of "AUF GmbH".

Products

From 1975 to 1979 the group made four films in close cooperation with union shop stewards and works councils of the United Flight Technical Works, VFW in Speyer and Bremen . This was followed by other films on labor disputes in the printing industry and in the retail, banking and insurance sectors.

The greatest importance achieved work and film from 1975 to 1979 in Speyer . At that time, the Speyer aircraft manufacturers waged a protracted and exemplary labor dispute against the closure of the Speyer branch of the VFW-Fokker Group . Arbeit und Film accompanied this labor dispute from the beginning. First, members of the group led the film Kalldorf against Mannesmann before 120 stewards before and their wives to learn from the mistakes of another labor dispute. Work And Film then shot the short film of solidarity or mobilization, Our jobs in Speyer must remain , which was shown at hundreds of meetings in Speyer and the surrounding area. In the further course of the labor dispute, the documentation " Vigilant Day and Night" was created . Finally, two years later, when the managers did not want to keep the agreements made with the works council , there was a third short film, Hands off the balance of interests .

The labor dispute in Speyer was so successful that all further attempts to shut down the plant could be fought off. Today this plant exists under the name PFW Aerospace AG .

Looking back in 1979, the works council chairman at the time, Willi Weber, said: “Actually, we can no longer imagine our campaign without the film. We were that we must think not only films about the struggle of other watch to offer us their experiences, but we wanted to share our experiences with others. "The multi-year collaboration with the stewards at VFW the self-image of the group work And film decisively shaped and was decisive for further work.

The film Vigilant Day and Night became a standard work of trade union education in the decades that followed. He made a major contribution to the theoretical discussion that was being held both in the film schools and in the trade unions on workers' films. Arbeit und Film spoke of the "intervening" as opposed to the "observing" worker film.

Technical equipment

Since work and film had little money, idiosyncratic approaches had to be taken to acquire the technology. The group obtained used film recorders : a Mini-Éclair camera , a Nagra tape recorder and a Picture Synchronizer (PicSync) for film editing from England .

The PicSync, developed in England from a simple film rewinder, was unknown in Germany up to this point. The small, handy device made it possible to roll over the working copy of a film simultaneously with up to four sound tracks by hand or motor. The tones could be listened to and the picture viewed through a tiny viewing window. When unwinding, all of the video and audio material simply fell into an open laundry bag. This inexpensive device could with a little effort replace a film cutting table that was ten times as expensive , but was not suitable for demonstrations.

Since it was an important principle of Arbeit und Film to carry out the film editing in close cooperation and constant feedback with the works councils and shop stewards, a method had to be found to make work demonstrations in larger groups. A member of Arbeit und Film, the toolmaker Konrad Harlan, invented a method at exactly the right moment to couple the PicSync to a 16 mm film projector via a film loop so that the image is projected onto a screen and - synchronously - the four unmixed audio tracks could be output via amplifier and loudspeaker. This made it possible to carry out mobile work demonstrations, an important prerequisite for coordination with the union shop stewards on site.

Film samples

Examples of 16 mm films (in brackets the year of the first showing)

  • Our jobs in Speyer must remain ; 16 mm, b / w 25 minutes (1976)
  • Watchful day and night ; 16 mm, b / w, 45 minutes (1978)
  • Steer clear of the balance of interests ; 16 mm, b / w, 18 minutes (1978)
  • Where? White-collar workers and workers struggling to keep their jobs safe ; 16 mm, b / w, 52 minutes (1979)
  • With tie and collar - warning strike ; 16 mm, b / w, 30 minutes (1981)

Prices

  • 1979: German Film Critics Award for Wohin? Employees and workers in the struggle to secure their jobs :
  • 1977: German Film Critics Prize for Vigilant Day and Night

Festivals

  • 2007 Watchful day and night & where to? Documentary Film Festival: Documentaries from the 1960s to 1980s , Naxos-Halle, Frankfurt am Main

literature

  • Hans Günther Pflaum : Yearbook Film . Hanser Munich, 1977, p. 179.
  • Civic education materials: analyzes, reports, documents . Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main 1977, p. 115.
  • Film und Fernsehen magazine , Association of Film and Television Workers of the German Democratic Republic, 1977.
  • Hans Günther Pflaum, Hans Helmut Prinzler : Cinema in the Federal Republic of Germany: the new German film, origins and present situation . Inter Nationes, Bonn 1983, p. 110.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Enzio Edschmid
  2. ↑ Elisabeth Mohn
  3. ↑ Gernot Steinweg on kulturdatenbank.de
  4. ↑ Cinema Action
  5. ^ Renault # La grève de 1968 et ses conséquences in the French language Wikipedia
  6. ^ British Film Institute
  7. ^ Kalldorf versus Mannesmann in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used
  8. ↑ Kulturkurier.de