Working group documentary film

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The Documentary Film Working Group (AG Dok) was founded in 1980 and is the only professional association in Germany that specializes in cinema documentary film and documentary television formats . It sees itself as a film and media policy advocate for documentary film.

Structures

Following the Duisburger Filmwoche, the AG Dok was brought into being by 84 documentarists. In 2019, the working group with around 920 members is the largest association of television-independent authors, directors and producers in Germany.

history

The working group was founded in Duisburg in 1980 after more than a year of preparation by 84 founding members. The founding board includes Klaus Volkenborn, Klaus Armbruster, Günther Hörmann , Dietrich Schubert, Hannes Karnick, Peter Krieg and Michaela Berger. Martin Schulz from Hamburg is employed as managing director. The first office is located in the new Hamburg film house. A first focus of work was devoted to the then poor acceptance of the documentary among film critics. During the Oberhausen Short Film Festival , AG Dok occupied the stage and asked “disturbing questions for us and the festival”. Among other things, this resulted in the call for the realization of an “omnibus project” - a joint episode film on the subject of “armaments and war”. The number of members rose to 150. A “traveling documentary film festival” organized by AG Dok in 1982 showed films on nuclear power , peace , fascism and squatting in Kassel , Erlenbach and Hanover . Due to the tight financial situation, auctions and flea market sales were carried out for the still young association. The number of members increased to 170.

In 1983, differences between the Filmwochen GmbH and the counter-foundation " Filmstadt München " gave rise to the idea of ​​an own documentary film festival in Munich for the first time . As a “test run” there will be a successful documentary film weekend in the following year; the first festival took place in 1985. In October, Gunter Oehme takes over the management of the club's business. At the beginning of January 1984 the office moved from Hamburg to Frankfurt am Main . From April onwards, Gunter Oehme received a monthly allowance. The job description included the creation of a documentary film catalog with proof of rights. In spring the AG Dok presented itself with a new logo: blue film tape and lower case letters. At the invitation of AG Dok, nine Finnish filmmakers toured on a return visit (an eight-person AG-Dok delegation was a guest at the local film association in 1983) from Frankfurt via Remscheid, Cologne, Oberhausen and Duisburg to Hamburg and showed their productions. A new board of directors was elected in 1986: Günter Hörmann , Wolfgang Bergmann and Thomas Frickel were elected to the "executive board". The latter is given the task of bringing about a decision "on the fundamental future path" of the AG Dok. At the Munich Film Festival , the AG Dok am Gasteig presented itself with a bus as an exhibition stand and appealed to the city and the country to “secure the existence and future of documentary film.” At the general meeting, Nina Gladitz reported on her trial with Leni Riefenstahl , the Gladitz had sued for omission because of her documentary "Zeit des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit" (Time of Silence and Darkness), because Gladitz revealed that in 1940 Leni Riefenstahl had forced 60 Sinti and Roma from the Maxglan assembly camp near Salzburg to work as extras for her film Tiefland, and after the shooting without financial remuneration Camp, where they were later deported to Auschwitz . The AG Dok published an appeal for solidarity during the Berlinale and donated 5,000 DM as legal aid. After the judgment was announced, Hanno Kühnert wrote in the weekly newspaper Zeit on March 27, 1987 : “The memorable trial went through two instances. Essentially, Nina Gladitz won it. "

At the general meeting in Berlin in 1987, the board of directors presented new statutes that emphasized the cultural aspects of the association's work. For the first time, three equal chairmen and three deputies were elected according to the new statutes. Thomas Frickel was appointed managing director (and remains so to this day). The decision on the seat of the office is made with 19: 7 votes for Frankfurt. The AG Dok publishes declarations of solidarity for Peter Krieg (because of his conflict with Federal Minister of the Interior Zimmermann over the film “Father's Land”), with Fritz Poppenberg (because of the expropriation of his film Stranded on the High Seas ), with 13 Chilean asylum seekers and with a group of judges and Prosecutors for Peace. In 1988, the European Film Prize was awarded for the first time in Berlin - albeit without a documentary film category. The AG Dok protested under the motto “No film award for Lumière” and organized a protest program in the Filmbühne at Steinplatz . In Mühlheim, the “European Documentary Film Institute” (EDI) was founded with the participation of AG Dok, which was renamed the Documentary Film Initiative (dfi) in 1997 . The number of members stagnated at 167. After the protests in the previous year, the European Film Prize first introduced a “documentary” category in 1989. At the German Film Awards , however, there was no documentary nomination this year, and no documentary was included in the film selection "40 Years of the Federal Republic of Germany - Social Reality in Film". The AG Dok protested against this at the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) and called for three nominations for the genre. The documentary was first explicitly mentioned in the regulations of the German Film Prize in 1990. The AG Dok called for the establishment of a sponsoring association to support the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival in the difficult time of political upheaval and will take a seat on the board there. The AG Dok celebrated its tenth anniversary in Duisburg and - with 300 guests - in the Moritzbastei in Leipzig .

The association took part in the 1991 media market in Munich for educational programs with its own stand. The AG Dok protested in written statements and an oral hearing against the intention to raise the reference threshold for documentary films to 50,000 viewers in connection with the revision of the Film Funding Act . The first membership handbook appeared in 1992. It lists 207 names. The results of the “Documentary” funding justified the concerns expressed in 1991: out of 382 applications from all over Europe, only seven are German projects, only two of which are successful. As a result, the “Documentary” guidelines were liberalized, and AG Dok is now invited to participate in the “Documentary” board. Thomas Hoeren offered AG Dok a collaboration on copyright issues. At the 1993 general meeting, the collecting societies' unjust distribution system was pilloried: feature films received eight to ten times more money than documentaries. At the request of the AG Dok, cinema documentary films were immediately placed on an equal footing with cinema fiction films in terms of exploitation law in VG Bild-Kunst . The first of the model contracts and “checklists” for television contracts drawn up by Thomas Hoeren were available in 1994. In a basic article on film policy, AG Dok called for “cultural reference funding” for the first time. The model was discussed years later in connection with the Film Funding Act . In addition, the AG Dok protested against the seizure of film material after a raid on Wolfgang Landgraeber and supported Helga Reidemeister in the action against the mutilation of her film “Go upright” by the SFB . The AG Dok initiated a - successful - complaint campaign against the blocking of exploitation proceeds at the collecting societies with letters to the Patent Office and the Ministry of Justice . A joint statement from 17 federal film prize winners and nominees from the AG Dok demanded in 1995 that directors of nominated films should also be recognized as prize winners. With an amendment to the statutes, AG Dok is strengthening its profile as a professional association : the association was thus authorized by its members to negotiate framework agreements with broadcasters and other exploiters and to defend their interests in collecting societies.

In Berlin, East and West German colleagues showed each other their films in three events "East meets West" and finally got a little closer. This was also reflected in the number of members: 60 new entrants are a new record. Winfried Junge was welcomed as the 300th member. The AG Dok was officially accepted into the board of directors of the collecting society Bild-Kunst . The distribution amounts of the collecting societies for documentary films produced independently or in co-production have doubled through the initiative of AG Dok. With Andreas Schardt, AG Dok hired its first contract lawyer to provide legal advice to its members. In 1998, Christlieb Klages and 2000, Christian Füllgraf, joined two other contract lawyers. The European Documentary Film Network (EDN) was founded as an umbrella organization in Paris in 1996 with the participation of AG Dok. For the first time, AG Dok was present with its own stand on the documentary film market in Marseille with its project “German Documentaries”. In 1997, the Ministry of Economic Affairs rejected funding applications for subtitling documentaries to support the trade fair appearance in Marseille, arguing that "anyone could come there". The trade fair presence takes place at your own expense. The AG Dok is appointed to the producers' advisory board of Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH. In 1998, the film department in the Federal Ministry of Economics granted the AG Dok funding for the first time for the subtitling of documentaries for the “German Documentaries” catalog and for the trade fair presentation in Cannes . At the general meeting in Berlin, AG Dok is one of the first German film associations to present its new website. At the same time, the 400th member can be welcomed. The Berlinale refuses to allocate a booth. During the entire film festival, AG-Dok members are therefore out and about in the festival center with vendor's trays to distribute “German Documentaries” catalogs and protest leaflets. The German Bundestag passed a new Film Funding Act (FFG). 18 years after its founding, AG Dok finally got a seat and vote on the administrative board of the Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA). At the same time, the reference entry threshold for documentaries was lowered to 25,000 viewers. In its “14 theses on the promotion of German films”, the AG Dok shows possible solutions that subsequently flow into the restructuring of the export union up to the re-establishment of “ German Films ”.

Against the renewed refusal of the Berlin Film Festival to provide AG Dok with an exhibition stand as part of the European film market in 1999, AG Dok applied for an injunction - and won. Since then, the “German Documentaries” label has been an integral part of the “German Boulevard” at the Berlinale film fair. With 115 new admissions, the association is experiencing a record increase this year. Thomas Geyer is welcomed as the 500th member. In order to do justice to the increased number of members, the board was expanded to eight people. At the opening meeting of the “Alliance for Film” convened by the Minister of State for Culture Michael Naumann , the DOK AG presented “Ten Theses on (Documentary) Film and Television”. Another paper will follow in the autumn meeting in Hof with AG-Doc “Theses on film culture”. In June the European Documentary Film Congress Munich took place with more than 400 participants from all over the world - organized by Dieter Matzka and Wilma Kiener on behalf of AG Dok. In negotiations with the State Ministry for Culture and Media, AG DOK achieved a second award in 2000 Documentary film nomination for the German Film Prize. In the “Alliance for Film”, the Dok AG presented the concept of a German film database as an Internet portal for German film. Much of this was later taken up by the “ German Film Portal ” of the German Film Institute (DIF). “OnlineFilm AG” was founded from the AG-Dok board with the aim of marketing independent films directly on the Internet. C. Cay Wesnigk is appointed to the board. Another amendment to the statutes in 2001 made the AG Dok even more distinctive as a professional association. The declared goal is now "to promote the commercial and economic interests of its members and to counter anti-competitive conditions and inadmissible general terms and conditions". The AG Dok accepts Hartmut Bitomsky as the 600th member. The Munich Documentary Film Festival says goodbye to Gudrun Geyer, who set up the festival in 1985 on behalf of AG Dok and directed it for 16 years. German Documentaries presented a “German Series” at the “Message to Man” festival in St. Petersburg . Minister of State Julian Nida-Rümelin is a guest at the AG-Dok general meeting in 2002. With warnings to the NDR (on behalf of the ARD ) and the ZDF , the AG Dok reached serious negotiations about problems in documentary film production. In autumn, the NDR negotiated a new standard contract for independent documentary film productions with AG Dok. For the first time, Thomas Hoeren invites the attorneys associated with the association, together with the board, to a joint strategy conference, which has since become a permanent fixture in the schedule of all those involved.

In 2003, AG Dok was invited to film policy hearings twice by the Bundestag's cultural committee: on June 23 for the " German Film Academy " and on October 15 for the amendment of the Film Funding Act (FFG). The new FFG puts the documentary film better than ever, and for the first time AG Dok is also given the right to appoint the award committee. Three AG-Dok authors are elected as delegates of the journalist professional group to the general assembly of the VG Wort . The election of the advisory board of the “ collecting society for film and television producers ” was canceled following a challenge by AG Dok and must be repeated. The challenge took place as part of the campaign to remove the so-called "VFF clause" in television contracts, which states that television service producers are forced to become members of the "collecting society for film and television producers". The association started the new year 2004 with a new design and a new logo. At the end of a series of events in which the AG Dok is researching the documentary structures of the WDR , Ulrich Deppendorf, the head of TV at the time, will come . The VG Wort decided on a motion by the Doc the appreciation of the documentary: it was evaluated as of this year with 80 place with 50 points, cinema documentaries are equivalent to the feature film. AG Dok becomes a partner in “German Films”. Nine years of fighting have passed since the first application for membership in June 1995. The transmitter negotiations were provisionally concluded in 2005: ARD and ZDF undertake to loosen guarantee regulations, especially for small producers, and to equate freelance authors and directors with their own employees with regard to repetition remuneration. However, this promise has hardly been implemented in practice to date. For the first time, VG Wort paid more money for documentary film writers and sent - also for the first time - comprehensible accounts. The "Culture in Germany" commission of inquiry invites the AG-Dok chairman to a hearing in the German Bundestag. Topic: The cultural mandate of the public service media in Germany. The AG Dok celebrates its 25th anniversary. In the summer it had 757 members.

Board

Known members

Web links