Film Scene

He is one of the few people who, despite all the crises, never gave up his faith in the potential of the German film. Now, after running the “Perspektive deutsches Kino” section of the Berlinale film festival for nine years, he is moving to the management of the Deutsche Filmakademie (German Film Academy) – nevertheless he can look back over a particularly positive track record.

There is hardly anybody else in Germany who has accompanied the German film through so many phases and different approaches the way Alfred Holighaus has. Born in the German federal state of Hessen in 1959, he says that his love for the German film all started when he saw the film version of the Karl May western Der Schatz im Silbersee (The Treasure of Silver Lake). He later went on to work as a film journalist and author. He also worked for Senator Film Produktion where he managed the department for project development and material and film purchasing. As a dramatic advisor and/or co-producer he was also involved in various successful film projects. Among them, Joseph Vilsmaier’s production of Comedian Harmonists about the legendary vocal group, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s psycho-thriller Das Experiment (The Experiment) and Peter Thorwarth’s comedy Bang Boom Bang. In 2001 Dieter Kosslick, the head of the Berlinale, persuaded him to join the team for the international film festival in Berlin. The aim was to boost the German film and endow it with more weight and profile at one of the world’s top film festivals. Holighaus was commissioned with the acquisition and presentation of German films and, on top of that, he became the head of a new section at the Berlinale.

The “Perspektive deutsches Kino”, whose program opened up insights into the works of new, up-and-coming filmmaking talent, caused such a furore at its opening that additional showings had to be organised. Its success can still be felt today. “There are still a lot of young folk out there in the stalls,” says Alfred Holighaus, “The festivals are now always very interested. In addition, the word has got out and spread to longstanding pillars of the film industry, as well as film distributors, that there is always something new to discover at the Perspektive.” For example, directors like Robert Thalheim, who with his family story, Netto, and later with Am Ende kommen Touristen (And Along Come Tourists) about a German placement trainee who is sent to work at a former concentration camp; then there is Bettina Braun, who in her film Was lebst du? (What Is Your Life Like? – no official English title), accompanies a group of young immigrants from Cologne for one year and with the help of her protagonists’ rousing music in the background manages to create a haunting portrait of their lives, torn between their dreams and reality, their hopes and their failures. Markus Mittermeier is also worth a mention – he not only landed a huge hit with his film Muxmäuschenstill (Quiet As A Mouse), a quirky story about a young justice fanatic, but was also awarded the 2004 Max Ophüls Prize and was even nominated for the German Film Prize.

A new quest for identity

With his Perspektive series Alfred Holighaus succeeded in focusing the public’s attention on new developments in the realm of German film. Are we then to deduce from this sustained interest in new talent that the German film has in principle gained more acceptance? Holighaus says – yes. The share that German films enjoy on the German market at the moment is a fairly stable 25 per cent. This was unheard of in the 1990s. Back then a kind of “comedy monoculture” prevailed, as there was nothing to fill the gap left behind by the “films d’auteur” of the 1960s.

“The turn of the millennium brought a new dawn,” says Alfred Holighaus. “Maybe it was a result of the new political situation in Germany after reunification,” he reflects, “but at that time a new quest was embarked upon to find an identity.” While the former “young directors” like Schlöndorff or Kluge were still coming to terms with their fathers and German history, a new generation of filmmakers were turning towards their surroundings, the zeitgeist and the private sphere for inspiration. This was not only in evidence at the “Perspektive deutsches Kino” section at the Berlinale, where every year the productions that were shown served more and more as a seismograph for the mental state of the up-and-coming generation of filmmakers.

Other films were produced such as Andreas Dresen’s love story Halbe Treppe (Grill Point) that won the Silver Bear Prize at the Berlinale in 2002. Christian Petzold, who, in his film Die innere Sicherheit (The State I Am In) from 2000, dealt with the situation of a young couple after the end of the German terror group, the RAF, and then went on in 2004 to focus on the search for a missing child in his film Gespenster (Ghosts). Fatih Akin’s immigrant drama, Gegen die Wand (Head On), was a sensation at the 2004 Berlinale and won the Golden Bear prize. All three of them went on to produce even more successful films. Dresen in 2005 with his  Sommer vorm Balkon (Summer In Berlin) and in 2008 Wolke Neun (Cloud Nine); Petzold in 2006 with, among others, Yella; Akin in 2007 with Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge Of Heaven) and in 2010 with Soul Kitchen. These are just a few examples of the increasing success of the German film.

Alfred Holighaus is not worried at all about the way German films go down in Germany. The spectrum of genres and subjects is broad indeed, the mixture of art and commerce well balanced. Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon), Michael Haneke’s story of unyielding Protestantism in a German village in the run-up to the First World War, won the Golden Palm at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. It is enjoying a huge audience – equally as much as Til Schweiger’s comedy Zweiohrküken (Rabbit Without Ears 2).

Continuity since the turn of the millennium

There is however still quite a lot to be done concerning the way German films are received outside Germany. “Even though there is hardly any film festival in the world that does not show one or two German movies or co-productions, films ‘Made in Germany’ are still not being taken seriously or given the recognition they deserve.” The only films Holighaus discovered in a British list of the best films of the last decade were the Oscar-winning Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) and the Oscar-nominee Der Untergang (Downfall). “These are films that work well on foreign audiences and tell something about Germany. Nevertheless people still have no idea at all just how many good German films there are. The fact, for example, that a film like Gegen die Wand (Head On) – a film with so much human clout – is not on any lists, disconcerts me somewhat.”

Discourse on the inside, impact on the outside – these are areas with which Alfred Holighaus will be dealing with in his new job as Executive Director of the German Film Academy, which was set up in 2003. There is still quite a task ahead of the man who had always believed in the German film when directors did not . As he was reported as saying in one of the Berlin dailies, “The German film has developed into an increasingly more important business commodity.” It is however still too early for him to speak of a German movie business. “It is more like a modest manufactory and no longer a cottage industry. And since the turn of the millennium there has been a certain continuity. If it stays like that, I think, we can all be satisfied.”