"It's good to compete with Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Rome"

Michael Harbauer

The 19th edition of the SCHLINGEL children's and youth film festival begins next Monday at the Cinestar cinema in the Galerie Roter Turm. What began in 1996 as a rather improvised children's film show in the former "Haus Einheit" in Chemnitz is now one of the largest festivals of its kind in Europe. That's why Michael Harbauer, Managing Director of the Saxon Children's and Youth Film Service based in Chemnitz and creative head of the festival, is our Maker of the Week!

The SCHLINGEL film festival starts next Monday. What do you do during the 51 weeks of the year when there is no SCHLINGEL film festival in Chemnitz?
Michael Harbauer: (laughs) Well, watching films! If only it were that easy to just watch films ... As you know, everything is pretty bureaucratic in our country and you have to write applications and do accounts when you need a few euros to organise a film festival. So you can spend the year more or less just as stressfully organising the financial framework. I've just had another phone call about it, it doesn't leave you in peace even a week before the festival.
And of course, and this is the nicer, more tangible side, we occupy a bit of a niche in Germany with the SCHLINGEL as an original children's and youth festival. In other words, we bring international film to Germany and are also committed to popularising German children's film abroad. We need to promote both. This festival week is the platform for this, we have the three international competitions, which are divided into Child, Junior and Youth, but we also have the Focus on Germany. This competition is judged by a jury appointed by the DEFA Foundation and the Goethe Institute. They select at least one film, which is purchased and translated into five to six languages and then tours the world.
Our work here is also linked with small programmes throughout the year. For example, I had the honour of accompanying the Prime Minister to Japan and showed films at the German School in Yokohama. I was in Tashkent at the end of April and we inspired over 3000 children there. But we don't sell the films there, we do cultural work! Children must first come into contact with German culture, just as we must bring German children into contact with foreign culture. If you don't learn that at an early age, I think you lack the ability to develop tolerance. And that's what film is good at: raising an issue and raising awareness. We also do this in the 51 weeks outside of the festival.

But what does the typical preparation for the actual festival look like?
We also need a short break, from the first days of January until the Berlinale at the beginning of February. Then all the accounts are done, all the texts written, the figures checked, the applications for next year prepared. And then the film viewing starts at the Berlinale. As a marketplace and the only major festival with a children's film competition and market, the Berlinale is the most important opportunity for us to make contact with distributors, world sales agents and producers. Everyone is there - whether from South Korea or Albania. Anyone who has a film presents themselves. The Berlinale is a great place to get a feel for what's going to happen this year and where the trends are heading.
In addition, there are several stops at friendly festivals where you continue to work on the programme. Towards the middle of the year, a focus usually emerges. But if you want to watch 900 films, you can't wait until July. So you have to start in February at the latest and not a day goes by for me without seeing at least one film, usually two.

900 films to watch? Do you actually see them all yourself?
It's divided into short and long films. More than half of the films are long productions (a children's film is longer than 50 minutes - but that also goes beyond the classic 90-minute format to over 120 minutes, editor's note), which I have seen. For the short films, I have helpers who make the selection. Now you shouldn't think that watching short films means you have less work. That's not true, because the stories told in short films are condensed and move the mind just as much. You just have more time to tell something in a long film and therefore have the feeling that you're investing more time as a viewer. With short films, it's also about a lasting effect, if that's not there, the film might not be interesting. But if it is there, then it occupies your mind for just as long as a feature-length film.

Where do you watch all these films?
One place is the small cinema here at the Kinderfilmhaus on Neefestraße, where you can watch films well. Also at festivals, preferably with children and in conversation with the directors or actors. And, of course, at home. For me, it's important that the screen isn't just a 15-inch computer screen. In order to perceive the aesthetic impression, you need at least one metre of screen diagonal. Preferably in a dark room so that you are not distracted by what is happening to the left and right.

The SCHLINGEL shows an incredible range of films from practically every corner of the globe. How do the films come to you or how do you come to the film?
You used to get a viewing DVD or video cassette. If you liked the film (incidentally, far fewer films were produced than today), you called and then the film arrived on the reel as a 35 mm print, sometimes the spindle in the middle of the film didn't fit on the European machines. Apart from that, today's variety of formats did not exist. Everyone knows this, even with file formats on the computer. It's not easy to trudge through this plethora of formats. You needed a lot of patience and good technology.
Nowadays it's often festival viewings, which I really prefer. Or you're sent a link and have a password with which you can watch the film once or twice. In that case, it's actually difficult to explain to directors why a film didn't make it into the festival programme. Because it's easy to keep track of how long and when you've watched a film. And then people sometimes say "How can you judge the film? You only watched it for 20 minutes and at two in the morning" (laughs). That's amazing sometimes.
It's important to us that every film has the same chance and we try to ensure that everyone on the film selection committee has actually seen every film. But the selection process is actually the most interesting and enjoyable part of the process. Because that's when you talk about films, about art. It's fun, the process of finding the programme is the creative process. That's great!
The most important criterion: a film should not be a film about children, but a film from the children's point of view. Children's films are usually about emulating a hero, while youth films are about broadening the audience's horizons. In the end, the Schlingelwoche at the cinema consists of 136 films from 50 countries, including productions from Iran, Canada, Morocco and South Korea as well as German films.

Many a film owes its presence in the cinema to SCHLINGEL ...
Yes, "Alfie, the Little Werewolf", for example. A distributor had already taken on the film, but only wanted to exploit it on DVD. However, we were of the opinion that the film belonged on the big screen and convinced the distributor in lengthy discussions to wait a little and look for a distributor to bring the film to the cinema. That went well. It costs nerves, but it's worth it - and these are processes that can fill the 51 weeks between two festivals. What we are proud of is that all of last year's main award winners made it onto the screens of all German cinemas or onto television!
Films are shown at Schlingel for the first time in Germany and always in the original language. Foreign-language films are usually subtitled. However, it is difficult for very young children to perceive the film and subtitles at the same time. For this reason, a small team with the support of students and helpers writes so-called text books that summarise the plot of the film in German. These are then "spoken" live in the cinema. Children perceive this as a whisper and allow themselves to be led into the film. In the end, the language in the film doesn't matter at all - because the children understand the film.

You could say that SCHLINGEL is one of the biggest festivals for children's and youth films, right?
We are in competition with three other major children's and youth film festivals in autumn - in Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Rome. Thanks to digitalisation, you can have a copy of the film everywhere, but not the director or actors. But they should also come, otherwise it's just not as much fun to present the films and a festival would quickly lose its flair. I would like to say that we are not in such a bad position. It's good for us, but also for Chemnitz, to be able to say that we're not competing with Dresden and Leipzig, but with Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Rome. (laughs)

The SCHLINGEL is now 19 years old, so it must be interesting to see the years in fast motion ...
It really is! We started in 1996 at the Kraftwerk/Haus Einheit in the big hall where everyone learnt to dance. That's where the first two SCHLINGEL years took place. Back then, there was only one screen in Chemnitz, the Metropol, and the Luxor film palace didn't exist yet. As a child, my mother gave me the opportunity to watch children's films and discover the world through them. I really wanted to do the same for my children. That's why I was looking for an opportunity to show films to my children, who were only two years old at the time.
Back then, we installed the projectors at the open-air theatre together with our friends from the Chemnitz film workshop and founded the "Kino im Kraftwerk" cinema. Children's films were shown there in the 1st Chemnitz children's film show SCHLINGEL. That was great! 700 visitors came ... Afterwards we were completely exhausted, because the day before the premiere there was a concert by the "Ärzte" in the cinema. We couldn't set up the hall and clean the toilets until two in the morning, so that the children could get in at eight. And by 2 p.m. we were out again, because Nena had a concert that evening ... and then we had to start clearing up again at 2 a.m. for the next day. The screen had been installed by the theatre construction company, we had a 12.50 metre screen and were able to advertise with the biggest screen in the city, because the one in the Metropol was half a metre smaller!
One day, Rüdiger Oertel from the Luxor asked if we would like to come to his new cinema. We said yes straight away, of course! In the new large cinema in Chemnitz, we were largely given a free hand and we didn't yet know how to pay rent. We were just happy that we could do something there and over time we took over bigger and bigger auditoriums. It really developed, it grew and flourished.
Later, at an opening, the then Mayor of Culture Peter Fittig said "If this is to become a festival, then we need a prize!" That was in 2000 and the next year we were awarded a prize of 10,000 marks by the city of Chemnitz. From then on, SCHLINGEL was a proper festival with a competition. The international children's film competition was the first, followed later by the youth and junior competition as well as Blickpunkt Deutschland and a competition for short fiction and animated films.
The closure of the Luxor was of course bad news and almost a threat to the festival's existence. When we were clearing out, it felt as if some life had been lost. Setting up a new venue was also complicated. In the first year in the Roter Turm, we had a huge drop in attendance. It wasn't because of the nice cinema staff! But everyone said "Our festival cinema is the Luxor!" The Roter Turm was the cinema for blockbusters, but arthouse cinema? Difficult. But we received great support from the gallery, so the SCHLINGEL was able to gain a foothold there. Audience numbers rose again the next year - and ultimately the move was good for the cinema and the SCHLINGEL ...
And last but not least, the Ehrenschlingel has developed. The many years of involvement with children's film have also led to friendships. One of them is with Václav Vorlíček, the director of "Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella" - one reason for bringing him to Chemnitz was to award him the first SCHLINGEL of Honour.

Why is the SCHLINGEL such a good fit for Chemnitz?
As I said, we wanted to provide a platform for children's films and also saw a huge need to show children moving images and let them think outside the box when we took the films to day-care centres and schools - in some years, this radiated far beyond Chemnitz with 3,000 to 4,000 events. It worked well in the city, but almost twice as well in rural areas, because there was often no cinema there at all. Showing films and stimulating discussion about them!
And why Chemnitz? Because people have lived here. I myself am from Rostock and have my wife to thank for being here. I missed the cosmopolitanism that the harbour city perhaps has a little more of here. But cinema, especially children's films, can help to convey that. It wasn't always easy, but the former head of the cultural department Petra Borges once told me "Persistence is rewarded!" Perhaps it would have been more difficult elsewhere ... The cinema has to come to the children - "Short distances for short legs" - which is why we were also the first in Chemnitz to negotiate a combined ticket with the Central Saxony Transport Association (VMS) to visit the cinema in conjunction with the use of public transport. This also makes it possible for children from the Ore Mountains to travel to the cinema.
Word quickly spread about our offer of a cinema day for schools, and the idea was born together with the school management and an art teacher from Karl-Schmidt-Rottluff-Gymnasium with a great affinity for film. In the meantime, this has also become a model for the André, Goethe and Agricola grammar schools. It includes different film programmes for different class levels in conjunction with the curriculum. The teacher is then the multiplier who does what we can't do at the festival - discuss the experience in detail again in small groups.

What secret dream do you still harbour for SCHLINGEL?
That has two aspects for me: Privately, it would be important to me if my children (14 and 20) could one day pass on their enthusiasm for the film to their children. That would be very sustainable. And more abstractly: it must not become monogamous. It would be a shame if one day there were only American and German blockbusters on the big screen and nothing in the wider world. If we want to think outside the box, then film is indispensable. I can travel, I can read and I can watch films. I deny the internet this ability, too much is left to chance and it doesn't have the credibility of a self-selected book, a film or of course your own eyes.

Are people from Chemnitz good cinema-goers?
They're not, but maybe the SCHLINGEL will make them a bit better. (laughs) Unfortunately, the people of Chemnitz go to the cinema far too little, unlike the people of Dresden, for example, who are the frontrunners. But maybe it's also down to the cinema structure. The old VOXX cinema was really good. There is actually a cinema missing on Kaßberg, for example.

A film about Chemnitz: would it be a thriller, a comedy or an action film?
The Filmwerkstatt often sees it with black humour, which I would like to agree with. Chemnitz often makes itself more vulnerable and smaller than it is. After all, it is the third largest city in the east! Smaller than Dresden and Leipzig, but still significantly larger than Erfurt or Rostock. Between the world wars, the Stuttgart state parliament once asked when Stuttgart would be as rich as Chemnitz. Many people no longer really realise this significance. So it may well develop again. One big advantage is the down-to-earth nature of the people, the sense of home and the solidarity. There have certainly been many people who have left for professional reasons and there are still many commuters, but they usually like coming back and feel at home here. This is not always the case in other regions. That is a strength!

... and as always: do you have to encourage the people of Chemnitz?
Actually, the people of Chemnitz have enough courage. What does "encouraging" mean anyway? Does it imply getting lost? The city is not being lost, it is far too strong for that ... The upward trend is much steeper than many people realise. Who would have thought that the music scene would be doing so well? There are two things you can use to publicise a city in this country: With a football club - that hasn't really worked so far - or with music - and that's what's going on right now. Chemnitz is much stronger than I think individual Chemnitz residents often realise!

The SCHLINGEL film festival will be showing 136 films from 50 countries at the Cinestar in the Galerie Roter Turm from 13 to 19 October. Further information on the films shown and their showtimes can be found at www.ff-schlingel.de