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In February the Berlin film distributor Torsten Frehse gave a memorable interview in the "tageszeitung": He was sure "that in five years' time we have to sit at film festivals and film markets with right-wing extremist lenders at the next table". Right-wing radicals are currently "the largest target group that has not yet been dealt with". Frehse reports attacks on youth centers in the East that show antifascist films and a scary distance from established politics. Common strategies for dealing with such challenges should have been developed long ago.
Even half a year later, there is no sign of such strategies. In the German film scene, comfortable ignorance, neat perplexity or other forms of distant waiting predominate over the cultural offensive of the ultra-right. Through their parliamentary arm, the AfDs try to restrict the freedom of art and gain the right to interpret culture, in order to systematically change social discourses through targeted agenda setting and uncertainty of established cultural institutions.
For example, Marc Jongen, former Sloterdijk assistant and today cultural policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group, says he wants a "despatch of the cultural industry". The march into the institutions has long begun: in the meantime, the AfD is also seeking access to film production. She already sits in several broadcasting councils of television stations, which have a decisive voice in film promotion.
It therefore raises the question of how an open society should deal with this challenge. The case of the Hessian film functionary Hans Joachim Mendig is in many ways a lesson.
The beginning of dagger legends
The fact that the man after a public, allegedly "private" meeting with the AfD national spokesman Jörg Meuthen from his post as managing director of the Hessian film promotion had to quickly clear in the face of over 600 signatures that demanded in the statement of September 15 Mendig's resignation ,
Right from the beginning, Mendig had become entangled in a performative contradiction: his meeting was private, he said, even though it was publicized in the AfD's social network, where it was referred to as an "animated and constructive political exchange of views." And although he was asked for an explanation from various quarters, Mendig remained silent, but at the same time claimed that freedom of expression was restricted here. Not without echo: The "FAZ" jumped Mendig in a comment at, described him as a "victim" of political "instrumentalization" and wrote of "old bills" of the political opponent. This is how Dagger Legends arise.
Lars Reimann / imago images
Film sponsor Hans-Joachim Mendig: Performative contradiction
With the party friends of the AfD abroad - in Brazil, Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungary, etc. - one can already in fact understand how ultra-rights in power deal with freedom of expression in culture. On the other hand, hundreds of filmmakers have spoken out with their signature: against the normalization of a party that opposes free cultural production and jeopardizes its exercise.
Expensive, but not better
But only the cultural and in the narrow sense of the film political development of the last 25 or so years has produced a system that could flush personalities such as Mendig in leadership positions: Prime, restructuring and technocrats, the film promotion alone as a means to an end and on better films not at all are interested.
Almost all the countries' funds for films, festivals and film-related training and publications have meanwhile been transferred to private-law structures. From Schleswig-Holstein to Bavaria decide now GmbHs, which are dominated by quote-driven TV stations, who can turn something where. (It was no coincidence that Mendig was formerly program manager at Hessischer Rundfunk.)
Last but not least, this regional structure leads to a "promotional tourism" which is annoying for all filmmakers - the compulsion to produce a film in several federal states in order to allow the money received there to flow directly back into the site as a "regional effect". The German films are thus more expensive, but not better.
Nevertheless, it is part of the jargon of this system that cultural value and profitability "two sides of a coin" represented. Neither one nor the other has much left in practice: in the greatly narrowed concept of the promoter, film has to be either "pure" entertainment or an illustration of meaningful content.
On a line with the AfD
The result is gaudy banal boulevards such as "I've never been to New York", which bluntly links to the revue films of Ufa, the presentation of "great" history or the film adaptation of "important" books from "German lesson" to "Schachnovelle", thereby to make a kind of social sense - at the expense of taste and art.
This uplifting state cinema and the development of real film culture is in line with AfD positions, as expressed in Marc Jongens balance sheet of the German Film Fund (DFFF) for the year 2017: "So many funded film production suffers from an overdose of politically correct social criticism to the the audience prefers to make a bow. " Therefore, "an ideological detoxification cure is needed". The cultural policy project of the ultra-right is culture-development.
The case of Mendig not only symbolizes the infiltration of right-wing discourses into the bourgeois mainstream, but also shows symptomatically how difficult cultural institutions are to find an answer to ultra-rights - if, like the German Film Academy, they are open on all sides and do not boggle anyone want. But in the current situation of a blatant attack on open society and its culture of diversity, greater clarity against law is needed.
The pull of the solidarity chain
With the declaration of September 15, the rampant fear culture in the German film over the film sponsors was once overcome - after all, an acting head of production was directly attacked and terminated the cooperation. The result was a broad coalition of different personalities such as Iris Berben, Dominik Graf, Nicolette Krebitz and Christian Petzold.
The statement of September 15 has distanced itself from the agenda setting of the AfD, but at the same time made sure that everything can go on as usual - in a system in which excessive understanding of film and cinema is rather harmful, undeviating co-flow in the stream of film funding against it necessary.
The unanimity in the case Mendig was therefore cheaply bought, because in the wake of the solidarity chain, nobody wanted to be on the wrong side. The mobilization still gives reason for hope. At the same time, it has distracted from the actual problem that needs to be addressed.
For the AfD's attack on the culture of open society can only be averted in the field of film if the concept of cinema and cinematic quality is artistically expanded again. Film must not be reduced by film promotion and political decision-makers to location marketing or a "national task" or representation cinema. It is not enough to drop a functionary who was obviously overburdened by communication. A new, different agenda of film promotion is necessary.
Plain text for the film price?
The federal states should and must exercise their cultural sovereignty vis-à-vis the federal government, so that, for example, more than eleven million euros, which the state of Hesse alone uses for film funding, will also produce better, bolder and perhaps even more successful films.
The purpose of film promotion should be to maintain artistic quality over the market. In particular, it should help to create films that can not prove to be economically viable for their artistic purposes - and to make these films accessible to the public and transmitted through education.
The next opportunity for political decision-makers to speak plainly and set the course for the future is certainly the awarding of the Hessian Film and Cinema Awards on 18 October.
