Monday 6th October

A few weeks ago I was in Frankfurt to take part in a discussion about the Why Democracy? documentary film project. It was organised under the auspices of the ‘Fernsehworkshop Entwicklungspolitik’.

This is, I think, a particularly German event. Roughly translated it means ‘Workshop about Television and Development’. I don’t know if similar meetings take place in other countries, but in Germany, this is a serious topic.

Those on the panel included Hans Robert Eisenhauer from ZDF/Arte – who was part of the Why Democracy? working group, and through whom, four of the films were commissioned by the Arte system (‘Taxi to the Dark Side’, ‘Bloody Cartoons’, ‘Dinner with the President’, ‘In search of Gandhi’).

Ulrich Spies from the Adolf-Grimme Institute also attended. The Institute awards the best German television programmes. Other notable attendees included Detlef Gericke Schönhagen who runs the Film, Television and Radio department at the Goethe Institute’s headquarters in Munich, and Thorsten Schilling from the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung - BpB).

They were all connected in one way or another with the project – the BpB had supported the project financially in return for getting the educational rights to the films for Germany. This collection includes the 13 short films by young filmmakers and the 10 Questions disc edited by Kim Finn – see http://www.whydemocracy.net/house/questions. They have also produced an excellent set of educational support material to all the films in German, see www.bpb.de or http://www.bpb.de/publikationen/7NX5VU,0,Demokratie_f%FCr_alle.html

The Goethe Institute had provided funding for the short films and in return received educational rights for the films. The films are going to be used in their 70 institutes around the world, through which they organize 25,000 film screenings each year.

Discussion revolved around making films on political and social issues for television and how to use the films as part of educational initiatives. A possibility was that the project be a model for combining television and education. Other questions raised were about the potential for making quality films for television, and how much ‘foreign’ programming or North-South dialogue German television would allow.

Although these initiatives will require considerable effort, there is real support for such projects and documentary films.

Some of the remarks around Why Democracy? as a project were very useful, and need to be taken into account for future projects, i.e. that similar partners should be involved much earlier on during the project. The clear consensus on future projects was that the internet should be a much greater player, and motivating young people to get involved through creating their own work and use of different media formats.

And some good news…the Why Democracy? project had been nominated this year for an Adolf Grimme award.