His­to­ry

The begin­nings

After more than a decade of plan­ning, the time had final­ly come on 17 Sep­tem­ber 1966: the gov­ern­ing may­or of Berlin, Willi Brandt, cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly opened the Ger­man Film and Tele­vi­sion Acad­e­my Berlin as the first film school in West Ger­many. The artis­tic direc­tor is the renowned doc­u­men­tary film direc­tor Erwin Leis­er, Heinz Rath­sack, for­mer film offi­cer at the Min­istry of Cul­ture in Kiel, becomes admin­is­tra­tive direc­tor. Full-time lec­tur­ers in the first year are Ulrich Gre­gor (film his­to­ry) and Peter Lilien­thal (direct­ing). Among the stu­dents in the first year are illus­tri­ous names such as Wolf­gang Petersen, Helke Sander, Harun Faroc­ki, Hart­mut Bit­o­m­sky and Hol­ger Meins — although one is miss­ing: Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder was reject­ed by the admis­sions com­mit­tee. Helene Schwarz was there right from the start, ini­tial­ly as a stu­dent affairs offi­cer, always approach­able and with an open ear for the stu­dents.

DFFB stu­dents were at the cen­tre of the stu­dent move­ment around 1968, earn­ing the DFFB a rep­u­ta­tion as Ger­many’s most polit­i­cal film school that con­tin­ues to this day: In May 1968, it was occu­pied by a group of stu­dents and renamed the ‘Dsi­ga-Wer­tow-Akademie’ for a short time. A red flag flies over the build­ing on Theodor-Heuss-Platz, which the DFFB shares with Sender Freies Berlin. In Novem­ber 1968, a con­flict that had been smoul­der­ing between stu­dents and man­age­ment since the first exams in 1967 esca­lat­ed: 18 stu­dents were dis­missed with­out notice and banned from the premis­es, and short­ly after­wards the artis­tic direc­tor Erwin Leis­er resigned after the lec­tur­ers with­drew their trust. Politi­cians are not far away from wind­ing up the Acad­e­my, which has only just opened.

It is main­ly thanks to the diplo­mat­ic skills of Heinz Rath­sack — who will remain in office until his death in 1989 — that things con­tin­ue. The fol­low­ing decade is char­ac­terised by polit­i­cal film­mak­ing. The fea­ture films of the ‘Berlin School of Labour Cin­e­ma’ by stu­dents and grad­u­ates such as Chris­t­ian Ziew­er, Max Willutz­ki, Ingo Kratisch and Mar­i­anne Lüd­cke, polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries and some of the first fem­i­nist films in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many were made side by side.

Some­thing changed with the class of 1979: for the first time since its foun­da­tion, more women than men were accept­ed and female film­mak­ers such as Ute Aurand, Lily Grote, Bär­bel Fre­und, Ulrike Pfeif­fer, Iri­na Hoppe and Ilona Bal­tr­usch brought new and above all exper­i­men­tal life to the lead­en polit­i­cal film school in the years to come.

With “Okay, okay. Der mod­erne Tanz”, the exper­i­men­tal first-year film by Christoph Dreher and Hein­er Müh­len­brock, the cul­ture of punk and new wave broke through the DFFB in the same year. Nick Cave appears in sev­er­al films by stu­dents, lives tem­porar­i­ly on the same fac­to­ry floor as Dreher and Müh­len­brock and final­ly Uli M. Schüp­pel fol­lows him on his US tour, “The Road to God Knows Where”. Count­less exper­i­men­tal film and video works are cre­at­ed and slow­ly a renewed inter­est in fea­ture films awak­ens.

While Ludger Blanke, Wolf­gang Schmidt, Georg Maas, Michael Freer­ix and Christoph Willems made quirky slack­er films full of humour, there were also stronger ambi­tions to enter the com­mer­cial film and tele­vi­sion busi­ness for the first time since the ear­ly days. Wolf­gang Beck­er and Detlev Buck were the most suc­cess­ful in this respect — the lat­ter, a farmer’s son from Schleswig-Hol­stein, ‘bribed’ the com­mis­sion with a sack of pota­toes at the entrance exam, accord­ing to leg­end.

The DFFB from the 90s onwards

Dur­ing the era of Heinz Rath­sack, which end­ed with his death in Decem­ber 1989 and was fol­lowed by two brief inter­mezzi as direc­tor with Mar­tin Wiebel and Thomas Koeb­n­er, a new trend in auteur cin­e­ma began to emerge at the DFFB, which was final­ly giv­en a label around the year 2000: Berlin School. Its pro­tag­o­nists Chris­t­ian Pet­zold, Thomas Arslan and Angela Schan­elec have remained the fig­ure­heads of this era to this day.

In the twelve years of his tenure, Rein­hardt Hauff focus­es on pro­fes­sion­al­i­sa­tion from 1993 onwards and intro­duces new cours­es in screen­writ­ing and pro­duc­tion along­side the core com­pe­ten­cies of direct­ing and cin­e­matog­ra­phy. Col­lab­o­ra­tion with broad­cast­ers was expand­ed, giv­ing stu­dents more and more oppor­tu­ni­ties to make fea­ture-length grad­u­a­tion films, some of which were also released in cin­e­mas, includ­ing Plus minus Zero, Berlin is in Ger­many and Mit­fahrer.

Grad­u­ates such as Chris Kraus, Eoin Moore, Hen­drik Hand­loegten, Han­nu Salo­nen, Mar­tin Eigler and Lars Kraume are now reg­u­lar direc­tors and authors in the Ger­man cin­e­ma and tele­vi­sion land­scape.

The DFFB since 2005

Fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of DFFB Direc­tor Rein­hard Hauff in 2005, there are protests from stu­dents who crit­i­cise the appoint­ment pro­ce­dure, which is car­ried out togeth­er with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts, as lack­ing trans­paren­cy. Final­ly, Hart­mut Bit­o­m­sky, the favourite can­di­date of many stu­dents, became direc­tor of the DFFB in 2006. After Hart­mut Bit­o­m­sky’s res­ig­na­tion in 2009, Jan Schütte was appoint­ed as his suc­ces­sor fol­low­ing an appoint­ment pro­ce­dure. Over the next few years, suc­cess­ful films such as “Oh Boy” by Jan Ole Ger­ster and fes­ti­val favourites such as “Das merk­würdi­ge Kätzchen” by Ramon Zürcher, “Ich will mich nicht kün­stlich aufre­gen” by Max Linz and Julian Radl­maier’s “Ein pro­le­tarisches Win­ter­märchen” were made. Fol­low­ing the depar­ture of Jan Schütte in 2014, there are con­sid­er­able dif­fer­ences between stu­dents and the Board of Trustees regard­ing the appoint­ment process and stu­dent par­tic­i­pa­tion. In 2015, Ben Gib­son is elect­ed as the new direc­tor of the DFFB by an appoint­ment com­mit­tee after an acad­e­my pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion of the can­di­dates.

With the depar­ture of Ben Gib­son, San­dra Braun took over as act­ing direc­tor of the DFFB until the end of July 2021. From 1 August 2021, Cather­ine Ann Berg­er as Com­mer­cial Direc­tor and Marie Wilke as Artis­tic Direc­tor joint­ly man­aged the DFFB; from August 2022, Cather­ine Ann Berg­er was the sole Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the DFFB. Wolf Ples­mann has been Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the DFFB since 15 Sep­tem­ber 2023.

Fabi­an Tietke, Fred­erik Lang & Ralph Eue