Which “cinema” shows around 70 German films every day in over 80 countries? The Goethe-Institut, the cultural organization of the Federal Republic of Germany, with branches throughout the world. It is the most active cultural ambassador of German films working on a global scale. For over 50 years Goethe Institutes have been supporting the distribution and reception of German films abroad. The response is very positive: every year the 134 Goethe Institutes around the world offer some 25,000 film screenings, or an average of 68.5 per day, reaching an audience of over two million filmgoers. They include many young people as well as cultural and political opinion leaders in the host countries. On almost every continent, Goethe Institutes have established their own German-language film festivals, for example in Hong Kong, San Francisco, Sydney, Prague and Tokyo.
Goethe Institutes’ programme includes films of all styles and genres, starting with silent classics by such directors as Fritz Lang or Ernst Lubitsch and ranging through New German Cinema auteur films, documentaries, shorts and animated films to the most recent productions: Cherry Blossoms by Doris Dörrie, On the Other Side by Fatih Akin and The Lives of Others by Oscar winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck are currently among the most widely shown films. The Goethe-Institut has a central film archive not far from Frankfurt and 37 of its own film archives dotted around the world which supply their regions with German films.
The Goethe-Institut’s film activities abroad are comparable to those of a well-managed movie theatre: there are film series focusing on special subjects, retrospectives, outstanding individual films, all combined with discussions, seminars and workshops. Time and again Goethe-Institut manages to win the support of leading film professionals to take part in their events. Star directors, including Fatih Akin, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff and Wim Wenders, or actors, including Monika Bleibtreu, Hannah Herzsprung and Barbara Sukowa, to name but a few, have all travelled the world for the Goethe-Institut.
More than 60 film representatives are working abroad, designing attractive programmes with the pool of 900 contemporary and historical films for which the Goethe-Institut has acquired the rights. “The film representatives work very creatively with this range of individual films and film series. That’s why their skills and specialist knowledge are of decisive importance for the success of the Goethe-Institut’s international film activities,” says Detlef Gericke-Schönhagen, head of the film department at the Goethe-Institut. “The key to our work with films lies not only in screening them. We also work on developing international film networks which benefit filmmakers, producers and broader audiences.” Here, the Goethe-Institut is aided by its worldwide network and its numerous contacts with film academies, filmmakers and film industry representatives in the various countries. In addition to this the Goethe-Institut cooperates with about 150 international film festivals, as well as film libraries, film clubs and film academies. The Goethe-Institut is also represented in regions that are not (yet) of economic importance to the German film industry, such as Africa or parts of Asia. In these places, Goethe Institutes often offer the only available possibility to watch German films.
Of all the different branches of culture represented by the Goethe-Institut, film is certainly the most regularly employed medium: some 45% of all the events are film-related. “Like the theatre or dance, films are able to convey the realities of life in Germany. They’re just waiting to be deciphered,” says Detlef Gericke-Schönhagen. “It’s not that films achieve more than other art forms, but they are easy to transport. And they can be perfected to the extreme. On the cutting table, where editors may sit for a year, it’s possible to polish the details to the millionth degree.”
Before the Goethe-Institut buys new productions for worldwide screenings, an advisory board consisting of experts from the German film industry discusses the selection. They concentrate mainly on aesthetic, content and artistic criteria. Apart from this, every film should be thematically suitable for long-term worldwide use. Film is also an important medium in Goethe Institutes’ German-language work: all of the films are shown in the original language version accompanied by subtitles in ten optional world languages.
When organizing different film events, individual Goethe Institutes also work with German Films Service + Marketing GmbH. This agency specializes in improving the reception and marketing possibilities for German films on a worldwide scale. “We’re the cultural representative of German films abroad, and so our main orientation is cultural and cultural-political. Although it includes aspects of export promotion, this is by no means our primary aim,” says Mr. Gericke-Schönhagen about the different approaches of Goethe-Institut and the German Films agency. However, both provide mutual support in their various activities. After all, both of them are ambassadors of German film.
