Cinema gathering: for the last eight year, German Films, the international promotion agency for German movies, has been inviting foreign buyers to Germany for previews of the latest productions. This event has become a film industry highlight. While just over a dozen distributors attended in the first year, in 2008 almost 100 travelled from around the world to the Cinedom in Cologne to view 18 current productions and almost 100 films on DVD. “The event’s success mirrors the revived strength of German cinema,” says Christian Dorsch, managing director of German Films. “And this is reflected in the sales figures as well.” This year’s most popular films included Geliebte Clara, a tribute to the pianist Clara Schumann, North Face, a Hollywood-style production about the first ascent of the Eiger’s north face, and Cloud 9 about the romance of an aging couple.
The last time German films celebrated such successes abroad was in the 1980s. The Lives of Others, a film about the East German secret police, grossed over eleven million dollars in the United States alone, followed by The Downfall and The Counterfeiters, which each earned over five million dollars. In France The Lives of Others was the most successful non-French European film of the year. And even in Japan the film ran for 38 weeks. In recent years German films have regularly won major awards, including two Oscars and a Golden Bear. In addition to this they have won a myriad of prizes at smaller film festivals, including awards for television films, documentaries and animated films. The critics are cheering and the audiences are in raptures. Cahiers du Cinema, the intellectual French film journal that was once edited by Godard and Truffaut, titled one edition: “German Cinema: A Galaxy Expands”. And current German productions are being discussed in French Internet blogs: “German cinema never ceases to amaze me,” writes one user.
Despite all this, Christian Dorsch still doesn’t have a real explanation for this success. There is international interest in the whole film spectrum without any indication of emphasis on particular genres or themes. “International sales have been growing for the last six or seven years,” says Dorsch. “The trend was spearheaded at the end of the 1990s with the breathtaking thriller Run, Lola, Run, and the breakthrough came in 2003 with the German reunification comedy Good Bye, Lenin! Maybe it’s because the present-day generation of filmmakers has a more international mind-set.” The same can be said of Christian Dorsch and his team in Munich.
German Films is the 2004 successor to Export-Union of German Cinema. It promotes the whole spectrum of German films abroad. In addition to the annual previews, the agency also organizes German film festivals, usually in collaboration with overseas Goethe Institutes, and it works closely with major international film festivals. The distribution support system introduced in 2005 has proved to be a valuable instrument in overseas marketing activities. It is designed to help foreign distributors by providing loans or grants for marketing expenses.
The Academy Awards also represent a climax in the year for the German Films agency. Under the auspices of German Films, an independent jury selects the German entry for the category Best Foreign Language Film. The entry for 2009 has already been chosen. The terrorism drama The Baader Meinhof Complex will be representing Germany in Hollywood. If it is nominated, German Films will be holding a big reception at the German artists’ residence Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades. And at about 5.30 a.m. local time, film fans in Munich’s Arri-Kino will be holding their breath in excitement when the decision is announced during the live transmission of the 2009 Academy Awards ceremony.
