6 February 2023

20th Academy Discussion
Content versus Film

With Dominik Graf, Thomas Heise, Nicolette Krebitz, Carolin Schmitz and Jeanine Meerapfel. Moderation: Andreas Kilb

Monday, 13 February 2023, 7 pm
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
For press tickets, please email presse@adk.de  
or telephone 030 200 57-15 14.

What constitutes a good film? At what point did the content of a film come to be prized above its aesthetic form, and where does this tendency come from? What happened to the appreciation of cinema as a composition of images, colours and sounds?
Jeanine Meerapfel and Dominik Graf talk to Thomas Heise, Nicolette Krebitz and Carolin Schmitz about the essence of cinema and what makes a film unique.
In 2018, in the run-up to the Berlinale, Jeanine Meerapfel began inviting film-makers and representatives of the film industry to take part in her Academy Discussions series to debate matters relating to the politics of film.

With:
Dominik Graf, film director, actor, member of the Akademie der Künste
Thomas Heise, film and theatre director, director of the Film and Media Arts Section at the Akademie der Künste
Jeanine Meerapfel, film director and president of the Akademie der Künste
Nicolette Krebitz, film director and actor
Carolin Schmitz, film director and screenwriter
Moderation: Andreas Kilb, film critic and culture correspondent
for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Berlin

Dominik Graf is a director and actor. His directing credits include feature films like The Cat, Geliebte Schwestern (Beloved Sisters) and series such as Tatort (Crime Scene). He has been a member of the Academy of Arts since 1994 and a professor of feature film directing at the ifs Internationale Filmschule Köln since 2004. In 2012 he won the Grimme Award for the tenth time. His feature film Fabian: Going to the Dogs screened in competition at the Berlinale in 2021 and was nominated for the German Film Award in ten categories. He has shot two new films for television: Das Gesicht der Erinnerung (The Face of Memory; airing on Das Erste, 8.2.2023) and Mein Falke (My Hawk, 2022).

Thomas Heise is a writer and director for theatre, film and audio drama and has been director of the Film and Media Arts Section at the Akademie der Künste since 2018. He is also a professor of art and film at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. His documentaries were either banned or not shown in East Germany. He was a member of the Berliner Ensemble from 1990 to 1997. His documentary film Jammed: Let’s Get Moving (1992) won multiple awards, as did other of his films. In Heimat Is a Space in Time (2019), the focus is on the human relationship with history, based on an account of Heise’s own family. The film was screened in the Berlinale Forum in 2019 and won the Caligari Film Prize, along with other awards.

Jeanine Meerapfel has been president of the Akademie der Künste since 2015. The film-maker and screenwriter has made a number of award-winning documentaries and features, including the documentary Im Land meiner Eltern (In the Country of My Parents, 1981) and the feature film The German Friend, 2012. Between 1990 and 2008 she taught film directing at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Her film essay A Woman tackles themes like emigration and remembering and forgetting. It was shown at numerous international film festivals in 2022 and had its theatrical release in December. It has been shortlisted for the 2023 German Film Award (documentary category).

Nicolette Krebitz is an actor, film director, screenwriter and musician. Since the 1980s she has appeared in over sixty films for cinema and television and began directing her own films in the early 2000s. In 2016 Wild was invited to the Sundance Film Festival and picked up various prizes, including four Lolas at the German Film Awards in 2017. In 2019 she won the Berlin Art Prize. Her feature film A E I O U: A Quick Alphabet of Love ran in competition at the Berlinale in 2022.

Carolin Schmitz is a director and screenwriter. Her powerful, rigorous works have garnered her regular invitations to the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen since 2000. In 2003 Carolin Schmitz was a founding member of the women’s documentary film network LaDOC. Her stylistically unusual documentaries include Portraits deutscher Alkoholiker (Portraits of German Alcoholics, 2010) and Schönheit (Beauty, 2011). Her current film Mother, starring Anke Engelke, presents a complex picture of motherhood. It has been shortlisted for the 2023 German Film Award (feature film category).

Event details
20th Academy Discussion
Content versus Film
Monday, 13 February 2023, 7 pm
In German
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Admission € 6/4, under-19s free

Press tickets can be reserved by telephoning 030 200 57-15 14 or emailing presse@adk.de.