Free Rainer - Your television is lying
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Free Rainer - Your television is lying |
| Country of production |
Germany Austria |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2007 |
| length | 124 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hans Weingartner |
| script | Hans Weingartner Katharina Held |
| production |
Kahuuna Films (D): Hans Weingartner coop99 (Austria): Barbara Albert Martin Gschlacht Jessica Hausner Antonin Svoboda Hans Weingartner |
| music |
Adem Ilhan Andreas Wodraschke |
| camera | Christine A. Maier |
| cut | Andreas Wodraschke |
| occupation | |
| |
Free Rainer - Your Television Lies is a German film by the Austrian director Hans Weingartner from 2007. The media satire describes the conversion of the television producer Rainer from a quota-oriented maker of lower-class television to an educator.
action
The equally successful and arrogant television producer Rainer serves the needs of the audience with soap operas , talk shows and game shows such as “Get the Superbaby”. This ensures high ratings for the private broadcaster TTS , but the cold social climate in his work environment makes him increasingly desperate, which is why he tries to make his life more bearable by regularly consuming cocaine .
One day while he was driving his previously damaged Jaguar XK8, a young woman named Pegah deliberately drove into the side of his car at high speed. She wants to take revenge on Rainer for driving her grandfather to suicide through a poorly researched report . Rainer survived the attack, seriously injured. While the doctors are reanimating him, nightmares give him the knowledge that his productions at TTS are contributing to the "media dulling of the people". Together with Pegah, he wants to find out the reasons for the success of inferior television programs after his termination and bring about a change.
During his own research , he learns the background to the determination of the audience figures, which he considers to be overrated and unjust because some social groups are not recorded. During a tour of the headquarters of the IMA, the institute for media analyzes, which is responsible for determining the odds, he steals a measuring device and kidnaps the employee Phillip. The insider, who suffers from a social phobia and is interested in conspiracy theories , agrees to support Rainer and Pegah in the planned manipulation of the ratings and gives them a secret list of the households that determine the ratings.
After they have confirmed through a telephone survey that the current audience rating actually changes when switching, Pegah suggests replacing some of the measuring devices with manipulated ones that they can control remotely. To finance the idea, Rainer sells all of his possessions. The trio hired some unemployed people to help out. You pretend to be an IMA employee and install the manipulated devices in some households. However, this leads to bigger and bigger problems. When one of the helpers caused a serious traffic accident while intoxicated, Rainer, at Pegah's insistence, had to pay the last available money as a security deposit .
In an emergency meeting, the helpers decide to continue working without pay, and the saboteurs develop a new plan. They are now manipulating the telephone lines over which the data is transmitted so that they can intervene on the way from the household to the IMA. You drive all over Germany to “liberate” enough households. In their headquarters, which they have set up in a lonely hotel, the first successes have been achieved in influencing audience ratings. The public is amazed that sophisticated documentaries and discussions are becoming increasingly popular at the expense of TTS and other broadcasters. Journalists suspect a revolution in society that is confidently distancing itself from inferior television. The success also leads to Rainer, with Pegah's support, getting rid of drugs and enjoying life.
Rainer's former program manager Maiwald, who is coming under increasing pressure because of the falling audience figures at TTS, learns of the new activities of his former employee. He meets him at the headquarters of the conspirators and puts him under pressure. Since Rainer does not meet his demands, Maiwald comes back with the police to have the group arrested. However, the group has since removed all computers and moved to another house. There they learn from the newspaper that the television viewers have got used to the high quality and continue to watch valuable programs, although Rainer and his helpers no longer manipulate the ratings.
Spurred on by their success, the group turns to the next project to improve society. They are beginning to influence the buyers' data in the Haßloch test market , as they suspect a further imbalance in which a small group of “testers” determine and shape the norms of society.
background
The film was produced by Hans Weingartner's Berlin Kahuuna Films in coproduction with the Austrian coop99 as a minority producer . The film was shot between August and October 2006 in Vienna and Berlin. The budget of the film is estimated at around two million euros . The film celebrated its world premiere on September 11, 2007 at the Toronto International Film Festival . This was followed by a screening at the Viennale on October 28, 2007. The film was shown in German cinemas from November 15, 2007, with over 45,000 viewers at the box office in the first three days. In Austria it started on November 23, 2007. On February 9, 2008 the film was shown at the Berlinale . The film was released on DVD in Germany on June 20, 2008 . Kinowelt is responsible for theatrical distribution in Germany, and Filmladen for distribution in Austria . The world distribution rights are exercised by The Match Factory.
With the film Free Rainer - Your Television Lies , Hans Weingartner primarily wanted to address how television is determined by quotas and how television quotas are raised. According to Weingartner, the idea of a conspiracy was not so far off at first, especially since he had never met anyone who had a measuring box at home. In the course of his research it turned out that the measuring system actually exists, but that it has significant weaknesses: “There are no boxes at foreigners. The 20% of Germans who do not pay GEZ are not recorded. Second devices are only recorded to a fraction, so hardly any young people either. There are many weak points. Why the advertising industry just accepts it is a complete mystery to me. I have spoken to many responsible persons, the tenor is: it has always been like this, there is nothing else. "
The television station TTS, for which Rainer initially works, is fictional. GfK , which is actually responsible for determining audience ratings, is replaced in the film by IMA, the Institute for Media Analysis. In the quota diagrams that can be seen in the film, the channels RTL , Sat.1 and arte can be seen in addition to TTS . Title pages with the head of real magazines such as Focus or stern are used for reports on changed television consumption .
Michael Darkow, “ Managing Director Television Research ” at GfK , said in an interview with Pantoffelkino TV, an offshoot of Fernsehkritik-TV in 2011 , that he welcomed dealing with the subject of manipulating market research. Technically, such a manipulation of the ratings, as it is shown in the film, is not possible, but "pure fiction". He accused the filmmakers of having a person whose name is mentioned in the credits of the film had pretended to be a journalist with him instead of openly confessing to the research for the film. In addition, the film was copied from the ARTE television production "The Heart of Quota" published in 1996, but there the "trash television viewers" are not manipulated, but murdered.
Sarah Kuttner can be seen in a cameo as a street reporter. In one scene shortly before the end of the film, Thorsten Feller and the director Hans Weingartner can be seen in further cameo appearances during a conference.
Soundtrack
On November 16, 2007, the soundtrack, which contains 18 songs, was released by Indigo . The soundtrack was composed by Andreas Wodraschke , who previously provided musical accompaniment for the film The fat years are over .
| No. | title | Interpreter |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | The Walk | Jack Ketch |
| 2. | Anger | Downset |
| 3. | Pegah | Andreas Wodraschke |
| 4th | Warmer | Beulah |
| 5. | Steal the box | Andreas Wodraschke |
| 6th | These are your friends | Adem |
| 7th | The box | Andreas Wodraschke |
| 8th. | Gonna tear it all | The Committee For The Preservation of Sound |
| 9. | 2 Of Us | Sister Vanilla |
| 10. | Hohenmaibach | Andreas Wodraschke |
| 11. | Magazines | Jack Ketch |
| 12. | Cut | Adem |
| 13. | I'm sorry | Andreas Wodraschke |
| 14th | Grassman | Dodgy |
| 15th | Knowledge show | Andreas Wodraschke |
| 16. | The plan | Andreas Wodraschke |
| 17th | Rainer | Andreas Wodraschke |
| 18th | Great Labor Day | Tom Jahn |
criticism
The reactions to the film were mixed. Some reviewers praised the message of the film, others criticized the superficiality and unsuccessful implementation.
Rüdiger Suchsland from Telepolis sees Weingartner's “most political film so far […] a media satire and a message movie, with the extremely great charm of a clear message”, “in the heart of the Trash TV present " aims. Hanns-Georg Rodek writes in Die Welt that Weingartner “largely ignores the complexities of today's media landscape”, but with his approach “goes far beyond the much vilified cultural pessimism”. To question the quota “as the sole regulator of social processes” is “the greatest utopia of all”.
Maximilian Probst criticized Die Zeit for the fact that the film "reveals with every scene what it is aiming at, namely to advertise the revolutionizing of the media and society". Due to “schematism” and “the crude agitprop stylizations”, the film “falls behind insights that it wanted to spread itself: No one is as stupid as this work.” Sonja M. Schultz criticizes the one-dimensionality of the characters at critic.de: “Maybe that's good for the quota. But is it enough for the revolution? ”Andreas Borcholte considers the film at Spiegel Online to be“ well meant, but completely wrong ”. In his opinion, it could have been “the German film of the year if it hadn't failed so terribly”.
The Lexicon of International Films judges that the film is "an attempted satire that rarely goes beyond the level of media-pedagogical clothing and uses precisely those means and stereotypes that it intends to criticize".
Awards
Hans Weingartner was nominated for the Golden Seashell Award at the 2007 San Sebastián International Film Festival .
Web links
- Official page for the film
- Free Rainer - Your TV is lying in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Free Rainer - your television lies with crew united
- Thematic and aesthetic background information (pdf), film & curriculum from the Institute for Cinema and Film Culture
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for Free Rainer - Your television is lying . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2007 (PDF; test number: 111 419 K).
- ↑ Vita: Tom Jahn ( Memento of the original from May 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Oliver H. Stadlbauer: Quotas - quo vadis? (No longer available online.) Extra service, December 3, 2007, formerly in the original ; Retrieved July 7, 2009 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Free Rainer - Your television is lying. Filminstitut.at, accessed on July 7, 2009 .
- ↑ a b budget and box office results ( memento of the original dated November 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. according to the Internet Movie Database
- ↑ a b c d e f Start dates ( memento of the original from November 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. according to the Internet Movie Database
- ↑ a b Interview ( memento of the original from November 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. with Hans Weingartner on the film's website
- ↑ Coeur de cible . Internet Movie Database . Retrieved July 8, 2011.
- ↑ DVD review: "Free Rainer - Your television is lying" . Slipper cinema TV on YouTube . July 8, 2011. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
- ↑ a b Background information according to the Internet Movie Database
- ^ Rüdiger Suchsland: Getting used to the bad. Telepolis, December 2, 2007, accessed July 7, 2009 .
- ↑ Die Welt, November 13, 2007
- ^ Maximilian Probst: Doof TV. Die Zeit, November 15, 2007, accessed on July 7, 2009 .
- ^ Sonja M. Schultz: Free Rainer. critic.de, October 29, 2007, accessed July 7, 2009 .
- ↑ Andreas Borcholte: Beautiful dreary world. Spiegel online, November 15, 2007, accessed July 7, 2009 .
- ^ Journal film-dienst and Catholic Film Commission for Germany (eds.), Horst Peter Koll and Hans Messias (ed.): Lexikon des Internationale Films - Filmjahr 2007 . Schüren Verlag, Marburg 2008. ISBN 978-3-89472-624-9
- ↑ Nominations and awards according to the Internet Movie Database
