International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film

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Logo of the DOK Leipzig

The International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film , DOK Leipzig for short , has been a two-section film festival that has been held annually in Leipzig since 1955 . The main prizes in the two competition categories, International Documentary Film and International Animated Film, are the Golden and Silver Doves . The main prizes in the German Documentary Film and Generation DOK - International Documentary Film Competition for young talent are the Two Thousand One Film Prize and the Golden Dove from the Sparkasse Leipzig Media Foundation . For the 58th edition of the 2015 festival, prize money totaling 75,500 euros was awarded. Since 2004, DOK Industry has also been an extensive, internationally oriented branch offering that is becoming increasingly important. In 2015, around 48,000 spectators visited the festival for the first time, and in 2019 the number of spectators was 48,000, around 2,000 trade visitors had attended the 62nd edition of DOK Leipzig, more than ever before.

history

At the “Capitol” cinema in Petersstrasse during the XVI. International Documentary and Short Film Week (1973)
Audience in the festival cinema "Capitol" with Dean Reed at DOK Leipzig (1975)
Billboards for the Festival am Markt (2002)

The initiative for the 1st All-German Leipzig Week for Culture and Documentary Film in 1955 goes back to the GDR Filmmakers' Club . Director of the first independent and all-German festivals in the GDR was Wolfgang Kernicke . The film week did not take place due to conception disputes between 1957 and 1959. With the resumption and a new conception in 1960, the festival began to establish itself in the documentary film landscape. The first international festival took place in 1961 and the following year the golden and silver dove were introduced as the main prizes. The pigeons were based on a design by Pablo Picasso , which he had originally made for the Paris World Peace Congress in 1947. At the suggestion of the Honorary Presidium, the French author Vladimir Pozner was commissioned by the festival management to ask his friend Picasso whether his pigeon could be engraved in the medals awarded for the festival's great prizes. As a symbol of the festival, the design was also present in its logo until 2004. In 1964 Wolfgang Harkenthal became the new director. The first serious political conflicts occurred in 1968 with the suppression of the Prague Spring . Although a few socially critical films were allowed to be shown in the program, films on the subject of " Czechoslovakia " were excluded from showing . From 1971 on, the GDR state authorities became increasingly involved in programming.

In 1973, with the ratification of the Basic Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR, the committee of the International Leipzig Week for Documentary and Short Film was founded . First president was Annelie Thorndike , Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler remained vice president until 1983 . Festival director from 1973 to 1989 was Ronald Trisch . The political influence on festival contributions increased further, editing and text changes were forced, the quality of the contributions decreased, as increasingly long films and television reports were presented instead of artistically high quality documentary art. Up until 1981, the selection committee and the press mainly criticized the “self-nomination principle”; Film packages from the Union Republics of the Soviet Union mostly arrived at very short notice, some of which were shown without having seen them beforehand.

From 1983 on, the Foundlings Prize was awarded by the Association of Film Clubs of the GDR. After 1990 the foundling was awarded by the Association for Film Communication .

In 1987 the first films on perestroika were shown, ARD and ZDF were official participants in the festival. In 1988 even Soviet films were censored by the GDR Ministry of Culture and the discussion groups were abolished. At the turn of 1989 the committee resigned. However, the festival received support from the provisions of the Unification Treaty .

Under festival director Christiane Mückenberger (1990–1993) there were some innovations: In 1991, the city of Leipzig's Dok-Filmwochen GmbH was introduced as the new organizer, along with a new motto. The series of events “DOK in between” took place for the first time and the youth jury prize was awarded for the first time in cooperation with the Leipzig Film School. In 1993 Otto Alder took over the "Animated Film" program section.

In 1994 the publicist and filmmaker Fred Gehler replaced Christiane Mückenberger. He remained director of the festival until 2003. A year after his start, an independent competition for animated film was held for the first time. Under a new motto (“Dialogue with the Myth”), the Golden Dove for a lifetime achievement was awarded for the first time in 1997 : to the Argentine director Fernando Birri and to Santiago Álvarez from Cuba . The first “night of young films”, an event with films, music, literature and parties, took place in 1998. In 2000 the association “Fernsehen macht schön e. V. ”for the first time the“ Shocking Local Short Night Shuffle ”, a local short film competition.

Claas Danielsen , filmmaker and director of studies , became the new director in 2004. He led the advanced training program for young documentary filmmakers, Discovery Campus e. V. and among other things the competition for the German documentary film. He also established the branch meeting point DOK Industry and a new motto “the heART of documentary”. The prize money increases to a total of 47,500 euros with the award of the “Sponsorship Prize of the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig”. In 2005 the festival was given the new short title DOK Leipzig . In the following year there was the “DOK Markt Digital” for the first time. The 2007 anniversary edition set a new audience record: almost 31,000 people attended the festival. The Finnish journalist Leena Pasanen is the festival director from 2015 to 2019 . In September 2019 it was announced that Christoph Terhechte would take over the artistic direction and artistic direction of the film festival on January 1, 2020 as the successor to Leena Pasanen.

Historical festival cinemas

Name of the festival

  • 1955: All-German Leipzig Week for cultural and documentary film
  • 1956: Leipzig Culture and Documentary Film Week
  • Between 1957 and 1959 the festival did not take place for various reasons
  • 1960: Leipzig Short and Documentary Film Week
  • 1961–1967: Leipzig International Documentary and Short Film Week
  • 1968–1989: Leipzig International Documentary and Short Film Week for cinema and television
  • 1990: International Leipzig Film Week for Documentary and Animated Film
  • since 1991: International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film

Mottos of the festival

  • 1960: "The film in the service of technical, scientific and cultural progress - For peace and prosperity of the peoples"
  • 1961–1990: "Films of the World - For Peace in the World"
  • 1991–2003: "Films of the World - For Human Dignity"
  • since 2004: "the heART of documentary"

DOK Leipzig

competition

Prizes are awarded in the categories of international documentary film , international animated film , German documentary film and, since 2007, Generation DOK - international documentary film competition for young talent .

The main prizes since 1962 have been the golden and silver doves , which are made from Meissen porcelain especially for the festival. They are awarded by the International Jury for Documentary Film and the International Jury for Animated Film and the German Jury for Documentary Film . The international jury for young documentaries awards the talent dove .

Other prices :

International competition documentary film

  • Golden Dove (over 45 min) endowed with 10,000 euros from TELEPOOL
  • Golden Dove (up to 45 min) endowed with 5,000 euros
  • Silver dove (over 45 min) endowed with 3,000 euros
  • MDR Film Prize (for an outstanding Eastern European documentary film) endowed with 3,000 euros
  • Service company ver.di award is endowed with 1,500 euros
  • Ecumenical Jury Prize

International animation film competition

  • Golden dove endowed with 5,000 euros
  • Silver dove endowed with 2,000 euros
  • Prize for the best German animation film endowed with 3,000 euros from Saturn Leipzig
  • Mephisto 97.6 - audience award

German Competition Documentary Film

  • Golden dove endowed with 10,000 euros
  • DEFA foundation sponsorship award (scholarship) of 4,000 euros

Retrospective

The retrospectives were compiled from 1960 to 1989 in collaboration with the GDR State Film Archive . Since 1990 this task has been taken over by the Federal Film Archive Berlin.

  • 1960 Dsiga Wertow
  • 1961 Films of the World - For Peace in the World
  • 1962 Alberto Cavalcanti
  • 1963 Joris Ivens
  • 1964 Robert Flaherty
  • 1965 films against fascism
  • 1966 French documentary
  • 1967 50 years of Soviet documentary film
  • 1968 Documentary in Poland
  • 1969 Documentary film and television journalism in the GDR
  • 1970 Documentary - In the Age of Lenin (75 years of cinematography)
  • 1971 Roman Karmen
  • 1972 Film in the peoples' struggle for freedom - Latin America
  • 1973 Film in the Class Struggle - Traditions of the Proletarian Film Movement in Germany before 1933
  • 1974 Cuban documentary
  • 1975 Leipzig Prize Winner 1956–1974
  • 1976 Documentary in Japan - its democratic and combative traditions
  • 1977 Soviet documentary film
  • 1978 Anima 78 - animated film of socialist countries
  • 1979 attempts - student films from the GDR Academy for Film and Television
  • 1980 Czech documentary film
  • 1981 American Social Documentary - USA documentaries 1930–1945
  • 1982 pioneer
  • 1983 Films in the Peoples' Struggle for Freedom - Chile
  • 1984 Reality and Film - proletarian and bourgeois progressive documentary made in Great Britain in the 1930s
  • 1985 Anima for Peace
  • 1986 The Spanish Civil War
  • 1987 Documentary of the Central Asian Soviet Republics
  • 1988 documentary in India
  • 1989 Klaus Wildenhahn
  • 1990 Karl Gass
  • 1991 Documentary in Denmark
  • 1992 Off to America , Gordian Troeller
  • 1993 City Views - Leipzig in Film
  • 1994 Prize-Discount - Documentary Film and German Film Prize
  • 1995 Newly seen - rediscovered: Documentary examples from 100 years of German film
  • 1996 The reality behind the pictures - films by Erwin Leiser ; Iranian documentary
  • 1997 Retrospective of the most important award-winning films from previous years
  • 1998 Alles Trick - German animation films until 1945
  • 1999 KinderFilme - Attempts to draw boundaries
  • 2000 When the encounter is the event - Jürgen Böttcher
  • 2001 Memory in Pictures - 40 retrospectives of the film archive on documentary films
  • 2002 women film women
  • 2003 Blick / Gegenblick - The History of the Soviet-Russian Documentary Film: Peter Schamoni
  • 2004 Volker Koepp : People and Landscapes - Films from Wittstock to Czernowitz
  • 2005 Red films are easier to see - the political documentary of the late 20th century
  • 2006 lichtspiele - classic avant-garde and experimental films in Germany
  • 2007 Search for traces - film positions from five decades
  • 2008 foreign home - migration from and to Germany
  • 2009 Joris Ivens
  • 2010 Director and Regiment - Germany and the Military in Documentary Films from 1914 to 1989
  • 2011 Inventory '61 - the world when it was divided
  • 2012 utopias and realities - the red dream factory
  • 2013 STORM! Through the short 20th century in eight mass movements
  • 2014 VolksEigener Blick - the camera in the DEFA documentary
  • Drawing borders in 2015 ... Europe since 1990
  • 2016 Seven Sins and Other Confessions in the Polish Documentary
  • 2017 Commanders - Chairs - General Secretaries. Communist rule in the visual language of the film
  • 2018 68 - An open score
  • 2019 BRDDR - changing views on 40 years of German dual statehood

DOK Industry

With DOK Industry , trade visitors have been presented with a wide range of industry offers since 2004 during the festival week. With a completely digitized DOK market , the international co-production meeting , the DOK Summit panel discussions and the Leipzig Masters - Forum Innovative Documentary Television , the participants are given a discussion platform as well as the opportunity for exchange and cooperation. In 2015, 1,750 trade visitors from 76 countries took part.

literature

  • DEFA Foundation (Ed.): Speaking of film. The DEFA Foundation yearbook. Verlag Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2000–2001; Bertz + Fischer, Berlin 2002–2005.
  • Fred Gehler, Rüdiger Steinmetz (Hrsg.): Dialogue with a myth. Aesthetic and political developments of the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival over four decades. Lectures and discussions of the symposium on the occasion of the 40th Festival 1997, at the same time VII. University Days for Media and Communication. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-933240-38-7 .
  • Andreas Kötzing: The International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week in the 1970s. A study of the festival's “political profile”. (Zugl .: Leipzig, Univ., Master's thesis), Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-86583-003-X .
  • Andreas Kötzing: »The safety of the festival must be guaranteed!«. Critical Youth, the Leipzig Documentary Film Week and the Ministry for State Security . Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2014, ISBN 978-3-95462-342-6 .
  • Andreas Kötzing: Cultural and Film Policy in the Cold War. The film festivals in Leipzig and Oberhausen from an all-German perspective 1954–1972 . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1264-7 .
  • Kerstin Mauersberger: White pigeon on a dark background. 40 years of the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. Henschel, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89487-280-2 .
  • Heidi Martini: Documentary Film Festival Leipzig. Films and politics in view and counter-view. (Zugl .: Hannover, Univ., Diss., 2007), DEFA-Stiftung, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-00-022950-3 .
  • Caroline Moine: Cinéma et guerre froide. Histoire du festival international de films documentaires de Leipzig (1955–1990). (Thèse Univ. De Paris I, 2005), Publications de la Sorbonne, Paris 2014, ISBN 978-2-85944-788-5 .
  • Ralf Schenk: Pictures of a divided world. 50 years of the Leipzig documentary and animation film festival. Bertz + Fischer, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86505-181-3 .

Web links

Commons : DOK Leipzig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b DOK Leipzig celebrates another audience record. ( Memento of August 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 56 kB), press release DOK Leipzig, November 1, 2015.
  2. ↑ DOK Leipzig 2019 comes to an end with a lot of audience approval. More trade visitors than ever before in Leipzig. (PDF; 834 kB), press release DOK Leipzig, November 4, 2019.
  3. ↑ Leena Pasanen becomes the new director of DOK Leipzig. leipzig.de, October 16, 2014.
  4. ↑ Leena Pasanen does not extend her contract with DOK Leipzig. leipzig.de, November 14, 2018.
  5. ↑ Christoph Terhechte is the new director of the Dok-Filmfestival Leipzig. In: Der Tagesspiegel . September 24, 2019, accessed September 24, 2019 .
  6. ^ Federal Archives: State Film Archive of the GDR, retrospectives on the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week