- 1999
- dogfilm für ZDF/ARTE
- Thematic Evening
- Betacam SP
- length: 3.5 hours
Already for the video "Juristic Bodies" dogfilm had started to work on the subject of "illegalization".
With the theme night "No One is Illegal" for ARTE, we wanted to make television a (fictionalized) place where people with and without residential permits can equally communicate - a place where nobody has to remain "invisible". For that purpose we have chosen to represent the perspective of the affected refugees themselves, as well as those who solidarize with them and claim a non-exclusive society.
Repression, war, economic despair, ecological destruction are the four main reasons of a migration wave at the end of the 20th century, which expelled between 70 and 200 million people (different statistics) from their home countries. Only very few will come to Europe or North America. The largest part of refugee movements takes place in Asia, Africa and Latin America. However in Europe, taken into account discussions about the security of the outer borders and an unified "foreigners law", in the last years, from governments and media, a targeted campaign of horror scenarios was evoked with slogans like: "The invasion of the poor", "Onslaught of the poor" or "Run on Europe". As a result of the so called "Schengener Treaty" everyone who tresspasses a border of another EU neighbour country without any valid documents is committing a crime.
Foremost the aim of the resistance against criminalization and deportation of refugees which exists at the moment in the campaign " Nobody is illegal" in Germany and in the movement of the " Sans Papiers " in France, is to focus public attention on the situation of people without documents and to change the status of deprivation of rights of refugees in our society through solidarity between the people and the affected refugees themselves. Furthermore it is an important goal to publicly discuss the global connection that lead to migration, to rethink the definition of "refugee", and to develop utopia that don’t end into a "Fortress Europe".
dogfilm has developed the concept for the theme night and produced different parts of the programme.
With Outside Help
- 1999
- dogfilm (Kröger, van Megen, Scheffner) for ZDF/ARTE
- Betacam SP
- 31 m
"With Outside Help" is a video collage about an illegal service. Between "Rescue" and "slave trade" lies a whole variety of ethic and political valuations and re-evaluations. The rescuer's office is the "No Man's Land", the "Transit sector". From here he guides the viewer onto a journey through three episodes of German history. His fictious personality is based on reports of different rescuers, whose work can be judged best by refugees themselves.
Hanna Papanek was able to escape from Marseille to the US in 1940 supported by the "Emergency Rescue Committee". Günther Hellvoigt left the GDR towards the West in 1972 in the trunk of a car of ARAMCO AG. The Kurd Devrim Kaya fled Turkey in 1994 and came back to her country of birth, Germany, with the help of an international trafficking organization.
Their experiences and their reasons to use "outside help" are confronted with the story of a medial change in values.
For a video of this production, please send your enquiry to dog@dogfilm.de.
Planeta Alemania - observations from invisibility
- 1999
- dogfilm & compañer@s for ZDF/ARTE
- Betacam SP
- 38 m
"Planeta Alemania" is the attempt to make a cinematic portrait of a woman, who is not able to position herself in front of the camera. "It is like being constantly on the run. We live practically like criminals without having committed any crime." In Germany are many people living and working without a status of legal residence, "without papers". From television we know them as "illegal people": made unrecognizable or degraded to "shadow people", equally as victims and suspects.
Within talks / audio recordings over several months we have, together with our protagonist, developed the drama structure for this film, from which the concept of images resulted.
Fragmentary, in different tableaus, an image of a person comes into being, without her actually leaving invisibility. Her analysis, her dreams, her expectations and her thoughts enable us to take a different point of view onto the "Planeta Alemania".
Concerning the directors: "Planeta Alemania" was realized through all phases as a cooperation between filmmakers, translator and the protagonist. Although herself being a journalist, she is for obvious reasons not able to sign this half-year-work with her name. Therefore we have decided to have the credits without personal names and to label the authorship through our filmmakers group dogfilm.
