German Documentaries 2013, AG DOK AGM Berlinale

Day two of the Berlinale was taken up largely by the annual general meeting of the German Documentary Association (AG DOK) at the strange pseudo-embassy of the German state of Hessen, a relatively elegant glass building tucked in behind the Hotel Adlon and... the site of Hitler's bunker. Fritz was particularly taken by the china his coffee was served in ("very 1930s" he said); I was particularly taken by the bunny rabbit that hopped behind us in the backyard whilst I struggled to follow along with the shorthand-laden German of our 'colleagues'. 

Much is at stake with German broadcasters for the documentary community here, and the guest for the afternoon session was Lutz Marmor, head of NDR and ARD. Basically, he did not have a very pleasant afternoon. 

That's him in the centre with his head down. Poor guy. I suppose he felt like he had no choice but to attend. Still, he might have made his afternoon more pleasant by promising a raft of new cash and guaranteed commissions to all manner of obscure projects proposed by attendees rather than summarily dismissing the idea of establishing a separate documentary channel (by no means a radical move for a state broadcaster) or referring to certifiably middlebrow nonfiction programming as 'controversial'. That said, this is probably why he got the job.

Anyway, most notable of today is that it marked the release of the German Documentaries 2013 catalogue, which is published in English as a project of German Films, AG DOK and German Documentaries, and LEHMBRUCKSTRASSE, FRIEDRICHSHAIN, BERLIN is in it. The catalogue looks like this (the teal colour is, admittedly, regrettable):

and the entry looks like this:

You can likely find a copy of it at the Goethe-Institut/film festival national promotional agency lounge of your choosing. It's not a big deal, but we do like having things in print.

We also saw an amusingly predictable feature from the Netherlands in which the entire Dutch dairy industry was revealed to be a coven of closeted homosexual activity, and a documentary about the efforts of the PM of the Palestinian Authority to bring their bid for statehood to the UN. We have no tickets for tomorrow.