SNIFFING OUT THE TRUFFLES
“To obtain an accurate impression, particularly in artistic and aesthetic terms, of how films are being produced internationally, one can no longer limit oneself to motion pictures. In view of the fact that television has become the primary medium of film consumption for millions of people who have never been to a movie theater or who no longer have a movie theater in their area, and that it is making more and more of its own movies, it is no longer viable to separate these media. FILMFEST MÜNCHEN, which was one of the first festivals to organize ‘video premieres’ to ensure that outstanding films are given screenings in theaters, will henceforth be open to television on a broad scale.”
— Eberhard Hauff in his foreword to the 1994 Filmfest catalogue
When it introduced the Top Television section, the Filmfest became one of the first cinema festivals to show world or German premieres of TV movies on the big screen. These were not limited to German productions; the inaugural year, 1994, saw entries from Germany, Canada, Japan, Cuba, the UK, Italy, and France. Two years later, in 1996, the VFF TV Movie Award (today the Bernd Burgemeister TV Production Award), sponsored by the Verwertungsgesellschaft der Film- und Fernsehproduzenten, was presented for the first time to the best German and best international TV movie. In that first year, a total of 34 German and international entries were in competition; the following year saw 42 entries from eleven countries.
Subsequently, the number of films was reduced, from 28 films from eight countries (Filmfest 1998) to 19 films from six countries (Filmfest 1999), before the TV section was split into a section of 13 TV movies “made in Germany” and 12 “international TV movies” in 2000. Starting in 2001, the focus was entirely on domestic production, and the section was curated by Gabriele Gillner.
From 17 German television entries at Filmfest 2001, the selection was expanded once again to 41 entries the following year. These included TV crime dramas about Commissioners Bloch (Dieter Pfaff) and Brunetti (Joachim Król), along with detective Dr. Eva Maria Prohacek (Senta Berger) in the crime series UNTER VERDACHT. Oliver Hirschbiegel’s MEIN LETZTER FILM, starring Hannelore Elsner, was given an official theatrical release in November 2001 following its premiere at the Filmfest that summer.
Senta Berger as Eva Maria Prohacek
Ulrike Frick'S first year
From 2004 to 2006, the section of German TV movies was curated by André Zoch, who not only worked at the Filmfest, but was also a producer at Maran Film and later a producer at Bavaria Film — a situation that over the long term could not be reconciled with curating the TV section. In 2007, he was succeeded by Ulrike Frick, who had previously been editor of the Filmfest magazine and whose work as a journalist covering the arts had included writing television reviews. She streamlined the New German TV Movies section significantly. “That didn’t necessarily make me popular with the Munich producers and TV stations,” Frick now recalls with a smile. “In my first year, I met a lot of producers and editors, some of whom were indignant because I hadn’t automatically taken their movies. Yet the fact that I always watch all the films to the end, in order to be able to explain what I think is wrong with them, paid off. At first, this sometimes made for a heated exchange, but also a productive one. Over time, the air cleared because the companies submitting the films noticed that there are also advantages to having a section that is curated more strictly. Having a film included in our selection makes it stand out more!”
The hidden word (2007)
November love (2007)
Windland (2007)
New ways of previewing the films
Something that’s changed over the years is who is submitting the films to Ulrike Frick. “Originally, a lot of them were sent in by the broadcasters and by individual filmmakers, but today most of the submissions come from the production companies.” Advances in technology have also changed the way films are previewed. “In the first year or two, I was still lugging VHS tapes home in big canvas bags. I screened well over a hundred submissions like that! Then there was a switch to DVDs, and later to Blu-rays. So there were still physical media that were being sent directly to me or to the Filmfest. After previewing the films, I’d send the discs to the program coordinators at the Filmfest so that the festival directors could watch them. Nowadays, though, it’s all done via links, which is of course much easier and faster overall.”
with the eye of a detective
Crime dramas continue to make up a large share of German TV productions, although Ulrike Frick says this comes in waves. “Sometimes I’m offered almost nothing but crime dramas. If there are a lot of good ones, I’ll take them, of course. Then again, there are years when most of the submissions are films that deal with current topics — with a certain built-in delay, because it usually takes two or three years to go from an idea to a completed film. The portrayal of sex and violence has become much more explicit, and not just in crime dramas. Today, the camera delights in recording everything, from the graying tip of a corpse’s nose to an open intestinal tract. With regard to sex, too, things are sometimes more intense nowadays — which doesn’t bother me at all, as long as these scenes are relevant to the story.”
In der Falle (2014)
Dampfnudelblues (2013)
success produced in series
Ulrike Frick included a larger number of serial works in last year’s festival, curating eight new feature films and seven new series for the section. For the first time, the Bernd Burgemeister TV Production Award was presented in two categories, for the best feature film and the best series, because the Verwertungsgesellschaft der Film- und Fernsehproduzenten (VFF) had doubled the prize money of 25,000 euros. “This was terrific for everyone involved! After all, we were one of the first film festivals in Germany to include TV series. The ‘golden age of series’ began ten or fifteen years ago, and since then, series production has become ever more differentiated. Today, series have a more diverse cast, are aimed more closely at target groups, and have long played a decisive role in television. We of course wanted to take all of that into account.”
finding the truffels
Overall, the aesthetics of TV movies and series have changed significantly. “Qualitatively, there has been a great leap forward,” says Ulrike Frick. “I would say it began around 2010. Domestic productions were facing more and more competition from international series, and that increased even further due to the success of streaming services. German TV productions were given noticeably larger budgets in order to keep up. Prior to that, films were still being submitted that often wouldn’t have worked on the big screen. Today, in terms of visuals, you could screen virtually any film or series at the Filmfest — it’s all top-notch! You can see that the technical standards at the film schools have continued to improve and that the students are proficient in handling a wide range of technical equipment when they shoot for television and the movies.”
This standard of high aesthetic quality is not always an advantage, though: “Everything that is currently being produced and submitted to us looks very good. But this ubiquitous, arbitrary glossy aesthetic makes some of it totally uninteresting. I now pay closer attention to whether a film takes a particular approach to its subject, whether there is something distinctive about it, an unusual appeal, perhaps also something that’s edgy, raw, unrefined. In that respect, my work has become more fine-tuned, more small-scale, which I think is great. I rarely have to think about whether a TV production will work on the big screen; instead, I can concentrate on the themes, the performance of the actors and actresses, the formal and stylistic aspects. There are also not as many submissions as there used to be, which allows me to do better justice to the individual films. In my early days, I’m sure I sometimes failed to notice a good film among the abundance of very random submissions. Today, almost 40 percent fewer films are submitted. That doesn’t make my job any easier, though, because by now they’re all so good that in principle you could screen any of them. In the meantime, though, I think I’ve become quite good at sniffing out the truffles.”
