HISTORY: THE JOURNEY TO THE FIRST GERMAN FILM LAW
In just over two years time, the German Film Law (“Filmförderungsgesetz”) and the German Federal Film Board (“Filmförderungsanstalt”) will be celebrating six decades of supporting the various sections of the German film industry.
International Press Articles 1950 © German Films
The journey to the establishment of the necessary legislation and an institution to implement was an eventful one. Initial attempts in the mid-1950s to establish a state film funding institution envisaged the introduction of a film levy to support domestic film production, however this met with resistance from Germany’s cinema-owners.
Renewed momentum in the debate for a national film funding body came in April 1962 when the Federal Government published a “Report on the Situation of the German Film Industry” high-lighting the particularly serious challenges now facing the domestic industry.
The report noted that cinema admissions had fallen by 26.7% between 1958 and 1961 from 749.7 million to 540 million; the production output of German films had decreased from 115 in 1958 to 73 in 1961; and five of the nine leading distributors of German films were now in financial straits.
“The idea of self-help within the film industry should be at the forefront of all considerations,” the report’s author declared. “Public assistance will only be acceptable if the film industry does everything in its power to tackle the crisis using its own resources. It cannot rely solely on outside help.”
MAHLZEITEN © United Archives / IFTN
This concept of self-help whereby support measures for the film industry would be financed from within the industry itself by the imposition of a film levy was pursued in the following years of discussion on the appropriate funding structure and ultimately provided the basis for the German Film Law passed by the Bundestag in December 1967.
A year later, in March 1963, the Bundestag deputy Dr Berthold Martin received backing from other colleagues in the CDU/CSU and SPD parties to submit a motion for a bill on measures for the German film industry which would foresee the setting up of a federal institution under public law with the name of “Film Industry Fund” to promote “the production of German films, their quality and their circulation.”
The fund’s revenue of around 20 million DM was to be raised from 5% of the cinemas’ annual turnover from the sale of cinema tickets and be paid out to producers according to their previous films’ box-office performance and subject to approval from Germany’s voluntary self-regulatory body, the FSK.
Moreover, the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF were to be obliged to pay a levy of 40,000 DM to the “Film Industry Fund” for every feature film they screened in their schedules. According to the so-called “Martin Plan”, any film that exceeded a specified threshold in revenue within the first two years after its premiere should receive automatic funding for investment in a follow-up project.
ZUR SACHE, SCHÄTZCHEN © United Archives / TBM
However, after initial all-industry support for the parliamentarians’ proposals which would have the prerequisite for such a law being effective, growing resistance to the plans from within the ranks of the cinema-owners and misgivings on the part of the film departments of the Protestant and Catholic Churches about the absence of an exclusion clause – the so-called “moral clause” – to prevent support being allocated to films with immoral content.
When the bill’s third draft came before the Bundestag in May 1965, rival factions within the film industry could not agree to the concessions made and the politicians consequently began to lose interest in pursuing the matter further.
Any chances of the bill continuing its progress eventually towards the statute books were then brought to a halt when the Bundestag elections were called that September and the Martin Plan was quietly forgotten about when the new Federal Government under Chancellor Ludwig Erhard took office.
While the architects of the Martin Plan may not have succeeded in reaching their goal, the basic elements proposed for supporting the film industry were regarded as representing “a decisive step” towards the establishment of the German Film Law at the end of 1967.
As Georg Roeber and Gerhard Jacoby pointed out in their Handbuch der filmwirtschaftlichen Medienbereiche in 1973, “the Martin Plan paved the way for legislative regulation. The issues to be resolved had been put up for discussion and the possibilities for resolving them by law were clearly outlined in the three versions [of the bill]”.
DIE LÜMMEL VON DER ERSTEN BANK © United Archives / Kindermann
They explained that the lawmakers were therefore able to come to agreement on the first German Film Law (“Filmförderunsgesetz”, hereafter known as the FFG) “in a relatively short period of time”: a motion tabled by Dr. Hans Toussaint (CDU), Dr. Ulrich Lohmar (SPD) and Wolfram Dorn (FDP) with other Bundestag deputies was presented to parliament in March 1967 and the legislation was passed by a majority vote in the Bundestag in December of the same year and came into effect at the beginning of 1968.
The FFG was an economic law since the Federal Government (“Bund”) did not have any constitutional power to legislate according to cultural criteria which were the sole responsibility of the federal states (“Länder”). Thus, its administration was placed in the hands of a federal institution under public law, the German Federal Film Board (the “Filmförderungsanstalt”, hereafter known as the FFA) with its office operating from (West) Berlin.
The FFA was charged with six key areas of responsibility: to raise the quality of German film on a broad basis; support German-foreign co-productions; advise the Federal Government on the harmonisation of measures for cinema within the EEC in order to create a level playing field; support the macroeconomic concerns of the film industry; promote cooperation between the film industry and television; and work for the distribution and market-oriented exploitation of German cinema at home and abroad.
ENGELCHEN MACHT WEITER, HOPPE – HOPPE REITER © United Archives / Heinz Browers
Following the “self-help” principle, the funding for this new institution was raised from a levy of 10 Pfennigs on each ticket sold, with the FFA granting financial support to producers for the production of German films and to cinema-owners for the renewal and improvement of their technical facilities and screening rooms as well as to institutions for the promotion of German cinema at home and abroad.
The automatic “reference” principle came into play for the FFG’s production funding category: a so-called “basic sum” (“Grundbetrag”) of 150,000 DM was paid out to a producer to invest in a new German feature film if their “reference” film had reached a gross box-office of at least 500,000 DMM in the two years from its German premiere. This threshold could be reduced to 300,000 DM if the “reference” film had received a rating from the German Film Rating (FBW) or been awarded the main prize at an “A” category film festival.
Producers could also receive an “additional sum” (“Zusatzbetrag”) if their “reference” film had an FBW rating or and was considered to be a “good entertainment film” by a sub-committee appointed by the FFA’s administrative council. The only exclusion – called by the young generation of filmmakers the “morality clause” (“Sittenklausel”) – was that films which violated the constitution or the law or offended moral or religious sensibilities would not be eligible for production funding.
When the FFG had been passing through the Bundestag committee stage, it had been anticipated that the FFA’s annual income from the ticket levy would be between 25 and 30 million DM, based on attendance at German cinemas of 257 million in 1966.
However, cinema admissions continued the downward trajectory they had been following the peak of cinema-going in 1957 with a total of 801 million tickets sold: admissions totalled 216 million in 1967 and only 180 million in 1968, the FFG’s first year of operations.
The FFA’s income, though, was in fact much lower than the projected figures, reaching only 15.4 million DM in 1968, 16.8 million DM in 1969 and 15.4 million DM in 1970, respectively.
EDGAR WALLACE DER MÖNCH MIT DER PEITSCHE © United ARchives-kpa Publicity
Although the 15 young filmmakers collected within the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Neuer deutscher Spielfilmproduzenten e.V. had been allocated two seats in the FFA’s administrative council, they had already decided before the FFG officially came onto the statute books that they would the boycott the FFA and its activities as a protest at what Alexander Kluge called the development of a “Schnulzenkartell” (“schmalzy cartel”) which would only favour the old guard of producers and established directors.
In addition, Haro Senft, who had been the initiator of the Oberhausen Manifesto in 1962 proclaiming the need for “a new kind of film”, pointed out that the inclusion of the “morality clause” was another reason for the action by the “Jungfilmer” since they feared that this would be used to restrict filmmakers’ artistic expression.
(In fact, the young filmmakers did not take up their seats on the FFA administrative council until the FFG’s amendment in 1974).
It soon became apparent when the FFA began its work that the old guard had been very successful in their political lobbying to ensure that the FFG would reflect their own particular interests.
SUSANNE DIE WIRTIN VON DER LAHN © United Archives / IFTN
While a handful of films by the upcoming generation of filmmakers such as May Spils’ freewheeling comedy GO FOR IT, BABY (ZUR SACHE SCHÄTZCHEN), Michael Verhoeven’s UP THE ESTABLISHMENT (ENGELCHEN MACHT WEITER, HOPPE – HOPPE REITER) and O.K. as well as Edgar Reitz’s Venice prize-winner MAHLZEITEN were awarded funding from the FFA’s coffers, the bulk of its funding of the “Grundbetrag” and “Zusatzbetrag” went to outright commercial titles such as the series of schoolboy comedies (DIE LÜMMEL VON DER ERSTEN BANK et al), the latest in the Edgar Wallace franchise (DER MÖNCH MIT DER PEITSCHE) or cheaply made films exploiting the arrival of the sexual revolution (FRAU WIRTIN TREIBT ES JETZT NOCH TOLLER).
The old guard of producers – with the exception of people like Franz Seitz and Heinz Angermeyer – showed little interest in backing the projects being developed by the new generation of filmmakers who were later to be known internationally as New German Cinema.
Moreover, the distributors were now the most powerful figures in the West German film industry, through the creation of their own production wings and the influencing of producers to ensure that their films would qualify for the “reference” film funding in order to make yet more of the same.
SCHULMÄDCHEN REPORT 5. TEIL – WAS ELTERN WIRKLICH WISSEN SOLLTEN © United Archives / IFTN
However, an amendment to the FFG in 1971 – the so-called “kleine Novelle” – saw the extension of the morality clause to exclude films of inferior quality and those depicting sexual acts in a speculative manner such as the SCHOOL GIRL REPORT (SCHULMÄDCHEN REPORT) series from accessing the FFA’s reference funding.
Meanwhile, the young generation of filmmakers from Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog through to Volker Schlöndorff, and Wim Wenders found supportive allies in such commissioning editors as Günter Rohrbach (WDR), Helmut Haffner (BR) and Hans Prescher (HR) who were open to back their films as financiers, but were finally able to benefit from the FFA’s funding following further amendments to the FFG passed at the end of 1973.
This so-called “große Novelle” saw the introduction of the new project funding category and was followed in autumn 1974 by the signing of the Film/Television Agreement between public broadcasters ARD and ZDF with the FFA, two developments which at last gave New German Cinema an opportunity to grow and flourish in subsequent years.
Martin Blaney