Dogfilm existed from 1991-1999 and consisted of the five members Bettina Ellerkamp, Jörg Heitmann, Merle Kröger, Ed van Megen and Philip Scheffner. We were trained in various fields such as visual communication, fine arts, psychology, film studies and journalism
From 1990 - 95, all members of dogfilm worked simultaneously in the interdisciplinary association Botschaft e.V. in Berlin-Mitte, where numerous events in all cultural fields as well as joint projects were realised.
As the dogfilm group of authors, we regularly worked together on video and television productions. During two years of regular work for the magazine "Z ’ for politics, satire and art (Kanal 4), we developed our own style in monthly contributions that hovered on the borderline between video art and documentary film, compilation and staging. Using our own and archive material, we created essays without commentary in a highly associative post-production process, in which, for example, interviews and experimental sequences were interwoven in terms of film and content.
During the work on "Z ’, we worked together with the other participants on topics that dealt with certain political or socio-cultural events and conditions in Germany, so that the work was not topical, but nevertheless linked to the current events surrounding us. In two years, around 25 short videos between one and seven minutes long were produced.
In 1995, our desire to make longer videos led us to leave magazine work for the time being and produce films for editorial offices such as ZDF (Das kleine Fernsehspiel), Kanal 4 (documentaries) and ARTE (theme nights), as well as independent productions that were not made for broadcast on television. We transferred and expanded the experience we had gained in the short film sector to works between 25 and 60 minutes in length. Our own position or point of view was again consistently presented without commentary, but through our own visual language, which is expressed both in the filming and in the editing. Within a year, the videos "Juristische Körper“ (Heitmann/ Scheffner), ”Try to Survive till 2005’ (Ellerkamp), "The Making of... Internet" (van Megen/ Zeyfang) and "Out of Body" (Ellerkamp/ Kröger).
The short film "Soap" from 1994 gave rise to an idea for a themed evening, which we were able to realise in 1996/97 with the editorial team of ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel/ ARTE. Under the title "Soap or Life is a Soap Opera" , we created a programme for ARTE lasting more than three hours, in which we traced the cultural, political and social significance of the phenomenon of the ‘soap opera’ in various strands of content and form. In the numerous individual videos of the evening, we were able to combine our various previous working methods and add new possibilities.
In 1998/99, Tina Ellerkamp and Jörg Heitmann produced another work for the editorial team of ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel. "killer.berlin.doc" is a documentary film about a fictionalised situation: ten people play a game in Berlin for a fortnight in which they themselves become the persecuted and persecutors. ‘killer.berlin.doc’ was produced on video and then transferred to 35mm film - the first dogfilm production to meet with an international response as a cinema film.
In 1998/99, again in co-operation with ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel/ ARTE, we developed the concept for the theme evening "No One is Illegal’". The aim was to create a fictitious, utopian place on television for four and a half hours in which Europeans with and without valid residence status have an equal say. The two documentary films ‘Planeta Alemania’ and ‘Mit fremder Hilfe’ by Merle Kröger, Ed van Megen and Philip Scheffner were realised in this context.
In 1999, we developed the pilot episode of a media magazine programme entitled "workstation" for the quantum/ 3Sat television workshop. Five documentary-experimental episodes are linked by a fictitious framework story: on 1 January 2000, the beginning of the new millennium, a group of people gather around a campfire in the middle of the city to tell each other stories ‘from everyday electronic life’.
On 31 December 1999, after more than eight years of working together, we closed the ‘dogfilm’ chapter in order to turn our attention to new fields of work, constellations and structures...