2 February 2021

16th Academy Discussion
About Cinema Landscapes and Streaming Worlds
Andreas Kilb in discussion with Christine Berg, Meret Ruggle, Christoph Terhechte, Anna Winger and Jeanine Meerapfel

Tuesday 9 February 2021, 7 pm, in English
Live stream and recording on YouTube and Facebook

With the Covid-19 pandemic, streaming platforms gained millions of new subscribers. Cinemas had to close. Film festivals had to go digital. While cinema allowed films to be experienced collectively, streaming offers private movie enjoyment. How can both inspire each other? And how can the cinema be saved for the future in view of distancing rules and underfunding?
Since 2018, Jeanine Meerapfel has hosted debates on film-related issues in her series of academy discussions in the run-up to the Berlinale. This year, despite the postponement of the Berlinale, the usual date is being adhered to - at least to continue discussions. We are concerned that the lack of collective aesthetic experiences and opportunities for discourse in public space will damage our democratic coexistence to an unforeseeable extent.

In discussion:
Christine Berg, chairwomen HDF Kino e.V.
Jeanine Meerapfel, filmmaker and president of the Akademie der Künste
Meret Ruggle, director trigon-film
Christoph Terhechte, artistic and managing director DOK Leipzig
Anna Winger, writer, creator, executive producer Netflix series Unorthodox
Moderation: Andreas Kilb, film critic

Christine Berg has served as chairwoman of the board of HDF KINO e.V. since August 2019. Previously, she was deputy board member of the German Federal Film Board (FFA). In this function, she was responsible for the entire funding area of the FFA. She was also project manager of the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF). Before that, she was, among other things, managing director of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung audiovisueller Werke in Schleswig-Holstein mbH (MSH) and artistic director of the Nordic Film Days Lübeck, head of the location office of the Hamburg Film Fund as well as recording manager for various feature film productions.

Andreas Kilb studied German, Romance studies, journalism and philosophy in Mainz and Frankfurt. Beginning in 1982, he wrote film and television reviews for the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In 1987 he left for Hamburg to be a film critic for the newspaper Zeit and reported for their culture section from Los Angeles for one year in 1998/99. He has been a culture correspondent in Berlin for the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung since April 2000. Selected film reviews and essays on cinema are published in the anthologies Was von den Bildern blieb (1997) and Kinoblicke (2008).

Jeanine Meerapfel has been president of the Akademie der Künste since 2015. The film director and screenwriter made numerous award-winning documentaries and feature films, including the documentary In the Country of My Parents (1981) and the feature film The German Friend (2012). From 1990 to 2008 she taught film directing at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. She is currently completing the cinematic essay A Woman, which follows the traces of a personal biography to negotiate themes such as emigration, remembering and forgetting.

Meret Ruggle studied cultural and social anthropology as well as film studies in Zurich and Paris and obtained a Master of Arts in Development Studies in Geneva with a focus on "International Relations" on the topic of "Sustainable Development". She has been working permanently for the cultural organisation trigon-film since 2016, during which time she built up the video on demand platform filmingo. In July 2020, the previous media officer Meret Ruggle took over the management.

Christoph Terhechte studied political science and journalism in Hamburg and was a film critic in Paris and Berlin. From 2001 to 2018, he was director of the International Forum of New Cinema at the Berlinale, which he developed into one of the major international centres of independent artistic cinema. Afterwards, he was artistic director of the Marrakech International Film Festival. Since the beginning of 2020 he has been festival director of DOK Leipzig.

Anna Winger is the author, creator and producer of the Amazon series Deutschland 83/86/89 and the Netflix series Unorthodox. The latter is the first realised work of her company Studio Airlift. Winger's debut novel This Must be the Place was published by Penguin Random House in 2008. Her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Winger's radio series for NPR Worldwide, Berlin Stories, ran from 2009 to 2013.