The list of founding members of the German Film Academy includes 89 people. They took part in the founding meeting of the German Film Academy on September 8, 2003 in Berlin and are named as signatories of the statutes adopted there. The list does not include people who were also members of the German Film Academy from the start, but who are not among the signatories of the statutes.
Background to the sections
When the academy was founded, there were nine sections (professional groups), some of which were renamed and supplemented in later years. In 2014, casting was added as a new section, while editing has been a separate section since the 2015 version of the statutes:
Sections of the German Film Academy
Section names as of 2003
Section names as of 2015
Documentary filmmaker
documentary
Screenwriter
script
Camera / image creation
Camera / image creation
Production design / costume design / mask
Production design / costume design / mask
Music / editing / sound design
Music / sound design
cut
producer
production
Director
Director
actor
play
Special effects / technology
Visual effects
Casting
Founding members of the German Film Academy
The following table uses the section breakdown from 2003 in column 4, but the current names of the sections (e.g. director instead of director ) in order to better distinguish them from the individual job titles listed in column 3.
The section is named to which the founding member belonged in the first year of the Academy's existence. According to section 3.7 of the statutes, a member of the academy can only belong to one section, even if he is active in several professional fields. A change to another section is permitted, however, so that some of the members listed below may meanwhile belong to another section.
Of the 89 founding members, 68 were men and 21 women. The sortable column 1 is used to illustrate this disparity.
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An example: When the actress Lisa Martinek died in 2019, she was referred to as a "founding member" in the obituary of the German Film Academy. However, it does not appear among the named signatories of the first statute. The German Film Academy mourns Lisa Martinek. German Film Academy , June 30, 2019, accessed on January 12, 2020 .