About us Federal Film Archives, Berlin The Film Archives are a section of the Federal Archives, and since 3 October 1990 they have also included the State Film Archives of the German Democratic Republic. Thus this is one of the biggest film archives in the world, as well as being the main film archive in Germany. As a member of a cinematic association, it cooperates with other institutions archiving films in Germany; at an international level, FIAF (Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film) and ACE (Association des Cinématheques Européenes) constitute a forum for cooperation in the field of film archiving. The Federal Film Archives are based in Berlin, and new film processing premises and a store for stocking nitro-materials are currently being built in Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten. The task of the Film Archives is to preserve all the representative parts of German film heritage and to make them accessible to users. The preservation of the film materials, and above all the conservation of older German films, is currently its most urgent task. Along with about 1,000,000 rolls of film, the Federal Film Archives also keeps an extensive collection of related materials such as photos, film posters and the most important collection of German censor cards. The Berlin premises also house a specialist library. DEFA Foundation, Berlin The DEFA Foundation was set up in January 1999. After Reunification in 1990, the state-owned DEFA Studios were privatised. The rights in films produced between 1946 and 1990 were not included in the privatisation process. The federal government and the Treuhandanstalt, the official privatisation agency which dealt with transforming the GDR economy into a free market economy, respected the DEFA film-makers’ request not to sell the film works they had created to private owners, but to transfer them to a foundation instead. The DEFA film library includes about 950 feature films and one-reelers, about 5,800 documentaries and newsreels, about 820 cartoon films, and about 4,000 German synchronised versions of foreign films. Deutsche Wochenschau GmbH, Hamburg The newsreel production company Neue Deutsche Wochenschau GmbH was set up in Hamburg in December 1949. In December 1955, Neue Deutsche Wochenschau was converted into DEUTSCHE WOCHENSCHAU GmbH. From 1978 until 2005 the DEUTSCHE WOCHENSCHAU was a subsidiary of the MULTIMEDIA . From 2006 on the DW belongs to the CINECENTRUM in Hamburg. Starting in 1950, various newsreels were produced, such as NEUE DEUTSCHE WOCHENSCHAU, WELT IM BILD, UFA and ZEITLUPE. For about 20 years, the newsreels accompanied federal presidents and chancellors all over the world. DEUTSCHE WOCHENSCHAU GmbH had relations with about 30 producers all around the globe, and it has over 12 million yards of film material on current affairs starting in 1945, making it the biggest (commercially run) German film archive for contemporary history. Deutsche Wochenschau’s film library includes NEUE DEUTSCHE WOCHENSCHAU from 1950-1963, WELT IM BILD from 1952-1956, UFA - later known as UFA-DABEI - from 1956-1977, ZEITLUPE from 1963-1969, DEUTSCHLANDSPIEGEL from 1954-1999, EL MUNDO AL INSTANTE from 1962-1991, and the Anglo-American (German language) newsreels WELT IM FILM from 1945-1952. The film library includes 2,700 newsreels, 1,800 monthly magazines and 2,000 documentaries and special reports, as well as 300 foreign newsreels and military training films from Russia and the GDR. Since recently, the stock has also included PINSCHEWER documentaries and commercials (1910-1930) as well as silent 16mm camera material from Germany (1925-1939). Transit-Film GmbH, Munich Transit Film GmbH was set up in 1966 to exclusively handle the worldwide commercial exploitation of film documents – mainly dating up to 1945 – from the Federal Film Archive’s film library in Berlin. These film documents include silent and sound newsreels from the news programmes produced by Deulig, Messter, Ufa, Terra, Tobis and Emelka-Ton, as well as Deutsche Wochenschau newsreels and documentary films. Transit has also been exclusively entrusted with the worldwide exploitation of the film library belonging to the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in Wiesbaden. The rights held by this Foundation cover around 2,000 silent films, 1,000 sound films and about 2,000 one-reelers (including commercials, cultural films and documentaries) from six decades of German film history. They include silent film classics such as METROPOLIS, NOSFERATU, and DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI, and sound film classics such as DER BLAUE ENGEL and MÜNCHHAUSEN. Transit Film also has a film library of its own that contains famous film classics, such as KATZ UND MAUS by Günter Grass, and DAS BROT DER FRÜHEN JAHRE by Heinrich Böll. Transit Film operates in the fields of licensing, cinema distribution, clip usage, production and co-production, and under the label Transit Classics it publishes top quality video and DVD editions. Progress-Filmverleih GmbH, Berlin PROGRESS Film-Verleih GmbH exploits worldwide the entire film library of the Deutsche Film AG (DEFA) founded in 1946. At the time when the Federal Agency for Specific Reunification Tasks privatised PROGRESS Film-Verleih in 1997, the DEFA film heritage included universal exploitation rights in over 10,000 film titles, with almost endless program hours and millions of yards of film material showing documentaries and reports. They include more than 2,000 DEFA newsreels for the “Eye-Witness” program. Numerous new productions and extensive materials from 40 years of production by Tellux-Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, sole partner in PROGRESS Film-Verleih since 2001, have been added to this stock since 1990. In addition, PROGRESS Film-Verleih GmbH holds the rights for German synchronised versions of films from Eastern Europe, Cuba, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, India and elsewhere. back to previous page