The Aca­d­e­m­ic Coun­cil — rep­re­sent­ed by stu­dents, lec­tur­ers and staff — of the DFFB would like to express its sol­i­dar­i­ty with the mem­bers of the Uni­ver­si­ty of The­ater and Film Arts in Budapest (SZFE).

The task of the cin­e­ma is a ver­sa­tile and pre­cise analy­sis of the world. This analy­sis is only pos­si­ble by seek­ing the truth, ask­ing ques­tions and rais­ing doubts. The basic con­di­tion for exper­i­men­ta­tion, which we call film­mak­ing, is a space where trust and free­dom pre­vail.

We can­not remain silent when such a for­ma­tive film land­scape as the Hun­gar­i­an one is robbed of its future. With­out the auton­o­my of edu­ca­tion, art can­not become autonomous either. We sup­port the inde­pen­dence of all artists* from any dom­i­nant gov­ern­ment and the right of every uni­ver­si­ty to insti­tu­tion­al auton­o­my.

Well, this is cause for cel­e­bra­tion!

On June 15 and 16, the meet­ing of the Jury for Fea­ture Film Fund­ing of the BKM took place. Fol­low­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of the inde­pen­dent jury, Min­is­ter of State Moni­ka Grüt­ters is sup­port­ing numer­ous fea­ture film projects with a total of 4.74 mil­lion euros.

We con­grat­u­late no less than 12 mem­bers of the DFFB on the sup­port pro­vid­ed by the BKM — very well done!

Our alum­ni Chris Kraus (15 JAHRE), Ana-Feli­cia Scutenicu and Jonas Wey­de­mann (TRANSIT TIMES) are hap­py about a pro­duc­tion grant. The project AUS DEM LEBEN DER ECHSEN by our senior lec­tur­er for direct­ing, Christoph Hochhäusler, is also sup­port­ed by the BKM.

Among the recip­i­ents of the script spon­sor­ship are our alum­ni Sara Sum­ma (EIN SICHERER ORT), Emma Rosa Simon and Robert Bohrer (LA BEAUTÉ HUMAINE), Clau­dia Schae­fer and Sun-Ju Choi (STAATSSCHUTZ), Jonas Roth­laen­der (STURZWELLEN), Susanne Hein­rich (UNMÖGLICHE MUTTER) and Thomas Arslan (VERBRANNTE ERDE).

Con­grat­u­la­tions! This good news gives us hope, brings a new wind of change and above all we can expect a lot of great fea­ture films in the upcom­ing time!

The chal­lenges for the film indus­try in 2020 are unprece­dent­ed. While every­one is still adapt­ing to the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion, we find our­selves in the mid­dle of the next dis­rup­tion by the Covid-19 cri­sis caus­ing a breath-tak­ing accel­er­a­tion of the on-going changes. NEXT WAVE address­es these changes by focus­ing on emerg­ing devel­op­ments in the film indus­try and beyond as well as cre­at­ing our own busi­ness mod­els. The 9‑month inten­sive pro­fes­sion­al train­ing pro­gramme run and designed by the DFFB and co-fund­ed by Cre­ative Europe MEDIA and Medi­en­board Berlin Bran­den­burg research­es cur­rent mar­kets, facil­i­tates inter­dis­ci­pli­nary dia­logue between pro­fes­sion­als and empow­ers its par­tic­i­pants to rethink the future of cinephil­ia and inter­na­tion­al film mar­kets.

The Dead­line for appli­ca­tions is June 30th 2020! 

For the next edi­tion we are cur­rent­ly look­ing for young pro­fes­sion­als from the fields of film mar­ket­ing, sales, dis­tri­b­u­tion, exhi­bi­tion and cura­tion. Our main require­ments are rel­e­vant work­ing expe­ri­ence of three to five years, a cre­ative, col­lab­o­ra­tive and entre­pre­neur­ial mind­set and a will­ing­ness to gain in-depth knowl­edge of the indus­try, to build a pro­fes­sion­al net­work and to devel­op own strate­gies for future film mar­kets. An excel­lent stan­dard of spo­ken and writ­ten Eng­lish is essen­tial as all class­es are taught in Eng­lish. NEXT WAVE will take on up to 15 Euro­pean par­tic­i­pants (in excep­tion­al cas­es up to three appli­cants from non-Euro­pean coun­tries will be accept­ed).

Detailed infor­ma­tion about the pro­gramme and the appli­ca­tion process can be found on our web­site. If you have any ques­tions, feel free to con­tact us via nextwave@​dffb.​de.

San­dra Braun will take over as inter­im direc­tor of the Ger­man Film and Tele­vi­sion Acad­e­my Berlin with imme­di­ate effect, suc­ceed­ing Ben Gib­son.

The DFFB’s Board of Trustees con­firmed the appoint­ment of San­dra Braun as the new inter­im direc­tor of the DFFB at its meet­ing in April 2020. Braun will ful­fill this role in addi­tion to her role as the Academy’s admin­is­tra­tive direc­tor. An impor­tant goal in the com­ing year will be to ini­ti­ate a struc­tur­al reor­ga­ni­za­tion of the Acad­e­my in order to main­tain and advance the out­stand­ing qual­i­ty of its train­ing for the future.

San­dra Braun stud­ied law and holds a Mas­ter of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion. After hold­ing posi­tions at BBC World­wide, Sen­a­tor Enter­tain­ment, and Rund­funk Berlin-Bran­den­burg, the 47-year-old joined the DFFB at the begin­ning of the year as Head of Admin­is­tra­tion. Speak­ing about her new role, San­dra Braun says: “The DFFB is one of Germany’s lead­ing film schools and enjoys an excel­lent rep­u­ta­tion in the edu­ca­tion and train­ing of young film­mak­ers. In the com­ing months, a spe­cial focus will be on respon­si­bly shap­ing the DFFB’s teach­ing oper­a­tions dur­ing the Coro­na pan­dem­ic and prepar­ing the struc­tur­al and orga­ni­za­tion­al con­di­tions for the long-term announce­ment of a new man­age­ment team. I thank the Board of Trustees for their trust and look for­ward to shap­ing this process togeth­er with DFFB’s com­pe­tent staff, excel­lent lec­tur­ers, and ded­i­cat­ed stu­dents.”

The mem­bers of the Board of Trustees, chaired by the head of the Sen­ate Chan­cellery Chris­t­ian Gae­bler, are look­ing for­ward to the col­lab­o­ra­tion: “San­dra Braun enjoys an excel­lent rep­u­ta­tion in the indus­try and with­in a very short time she has suc­ceed­ed in set­ting the course for dig­i­tal teach­ing dur­ing the cur­rent emer­gency as well as estab­lish­ing a cul­ture of con­struc­tive coop­er­a­tion at the DFFB. Her expe­ri­ence in film and tele­vi­sion, her exper­tise with change process­es and her inter­na­tion­al net­work are an asset to the DFFB. I am con­vinced that Ms. Braun will inno­v­a­tive­ly dri­ve the Academy’s  devel­op­ment, man­age the upcom­ing changes at the DFFB with a high lev­el of com­pe­tence, and pre­pare the replace­ment of the direc­torate from April 2021 with the utmost care,” con­cludes Chair­man of the Board of Trustees Chris­t­ian Gae­bler.

We look for­ward to work­ing with San­dra Braun as our Inter­im Direc­tor and are con­fi­dent that she will suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate DFFB through the chal­lenges ahead, includ­ing those relat­ed to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Europe’s pre­mier post­grad­u­ate train­ing pro­gramme for TV writ­ers and pro­duc­ers, is cur­rent­ly accept­ing appli­ca­tions for the new admis­sions cycle. Ser­i­al Eyes pre­pares the next gen­er­a­tion of Euro­pean TV writ­ers to cre­ate high-end seri­al­ized sto­ry­telling and work in a writ­ers’ room set­ting. Teach­ing staff include top Euro­pean and Amer­i­can showrun­ners, writ­ers, exec­u­tive pro­duc­ers and com­mis­sion­ing edi­tors from major Euro­pean broad­cast­ers, includ­ing CANAL+, HBO Europe, RTL and SKY.

Ser­i­al Eyes is DFFB’s full-time, res­i­den­tial train­ing pro­gramme based in Berlin, run­ning from Sep­tem­ber 2020 through May 2021.

The Dead­line for appli­ca­tions is April 30th 2020! 

For full appli­ca­tion require­ments, appli­ca­tion mate­r­i­al and infor­ma­tion on the schol­ar­ship please vis­it https://​ser​i​al​-eyes​.com/​a​d​m​i​s​s​i​o​ns/.

We’re look­ing for­ward to a great, tal­ent­ed squad for this year’s pro­gramme!

You’re not sure yet­what study­ing at the DFFB can look be, look and feel like? Alessan­dra Albano, who com­plet­ed her FSJ at the DFFB, armed her­self with the cam­era and cap­tured many beau­ti­ful moments that shaped the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2018/​2019: from every­day life at the acad­e­my to numer­ous sem­i­nars and shoot­ing to our anu­al sum­mer par­ty!

You can apply until Jan­u­ary 7th/​8th for a study with the focus on scriptwrit­ing, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, direct­ing, pro­duc­ing or edit­ing & sound.

We’re already look­ing for­ward to the new tal­ents who will think, learn, shoot and cel­e­brate with us from Octo­ber on.

Click here for appli­ca­tion tasks and infor­ma­tion.

MUSIC AND APOCALYPSE

Fea­ture Film by alum­nus Max Linz

GOOD GIRL GONE BAD

Fea­ture Film by lec­tur­er Petra Lüschow

I WAS AT HOME, BUT…

Fea­ture Film by alum­na Angela Schan­elec

AREN‘T YOU HAPPY

Fea­ture Film by Susanne Hein­rich

The DFFB wel­comes its new stu­dents and looks for­ward to live­ly dis­cus­sions, vision­ary films and new accents in the Filmhaus at Pots­damer Platz! Work hard, have fun and enjoy film­mak­ing! We are already curi­ous about your films to come and we are very excit­ed about the tal­ent­ed addi­tion to the DFFB fam­i­ly!

Den­nis Schanz has tak­en on the roles of head writer and pro­duc­er to realise his series idea SKYLINES with Net­flix. SKYLINES is the first project devel­oped with­in Ser­i­al Eyes that will be screened on the largest inter­net enter­tain­ment ser­vice.

The series is about a tal­ent­ed hip-hop pro­duc­er who lives in Frank­furt am Main and receives the offer of a life­time. It will run exclu­sive­ly and world­wide on Net­flix from 27 Sep­tem­ber 2019.

Den­nis Schanz devel­oped the idea for the series with­in the Writ­ers’ Room of Ser­i­al Eyes. He was sup­port­ed by var­i­ous lec­tur­ers (includ­ing US showrun­ner Frank Spot­nitz and dra­maturge Nico­la Lusuar­di) and by his men­tor and pro­duc­er Klaus Zim­mer­mann, and then fol­lowed up on the project. With Net­flix, Schanz – tak­ing on the posi­tions of head writer, pro­duc­er, and showrun­ner – final­ly found a part­ner with whom to realise this unusu­al project, which is set between the hip-hop and crim­i­nal worlds.

Den­nis Schanz also enlist­ed three of his Ser­i­al Eyes col­leagues to be on the writ­ers’ team: Oliv­er Karan, Kim Zim­mer­mann, and Arne Ahrens have con­tributed to scripts for the six-part SYKLINES sea­son. The DFFB is also delight­ed by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of oth­er DFFB alum­ni in the pro­duc­tion: Luis Singer (pro­duc­er at Stick­Up Film­pro­duk­tion) and Jonas Dorn­bach and David Keitsch (pro­duc­ers at Kom­plizen­film) are the lead pro­duc­ers of the series, and DFFB alu­munus Max Erlen­wein direct­ed episodes 1–3.

We are very excit­ed and keep our fin­gers crossed for a suc­cess­ful series start!