Quarterly 4 · 2006 - German Cinema

WRITING FOR
THE SCREEN
Dr. Christina Kallas is a writer-producer and the president of the
Federation of Screenwriters in Europe (FSE), which unites 9000
screenwriters and 21 writers’ guilds across Europe and is currently
growing at phenomenal speed to involve Eastern European screenwriters
too. She is a member of the board of the Screenwriters Guild
of Germany (VDD), a member of the German and of the European
Film Academy. She is also the artistic director of the Balkan Fund, the
script development fund within the framework of the Thessaloniki
Film Festival (which was fundamental in the development of the 2006
Golden Bear winner Grbavica) and a member of the screenplay funding
commission of the German Federal Film Board. Kallas has been
teaching Screenwriting since 1998 at the German Film & Television
Academy in Berlin and since 2004 also at the Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki. She is the author of three books: European Co-
Productions in Film and Television (Nomos Verlag, 1992), The Art of
Invention and Narration in the Cinema (Nefeli, Athens 2006) and
Creative Screenwriting. An Attempt at a Method (UVK 2007, working
title). As the president of the FSE, Kallas is chairing a Conference on
European Screenwriting in association with the European Film
Academy, the Robert Bosch Foundation and CNC-funded Balkan
Fund in November 2006 at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, aiming to
tackle all the following issues and their implications for screenwriters.
German Films Quarterly spoke with Christina Kallas about screenwriting
in Germany and Europe.
WHAT IS THE SITUATION FOR SCREENWRITERS IN
GERMANY? WOULD YOU SAY THAT GERMANY HAS
A HEALTHY SCREENWRITING SECTOR?
At the moment it is tough for screenwriters, that’s for sure. There
was a short period when Germany had started developing something
like a healthy screenwriting sector in TV, but this is now also over.
There are several reasons for that – to name just a few: cheap programming
like reality shows and the predominance of the audience
percentage quotas even on public TV, which leaves no room for trying
things out. The cinema situation is the same as in the whole of
Europe: no screenwriter can live from writing for the cinema alone.
DO YOU THINK WRITING TALENT IS BEING RE-
COGNIZED AND REACHING THE SCREEN, OR DOES
THE SYSTEM STIFLE ORIGINALITY?
Dr. Christina Kallas (photo courtesy of VDD)
Now, there are times when things go perfectly well, but often by the
time you have gone through four co-producers, two commissioning
editors and a couple of directors (especially the ones who do not stay
in the film after all) the screenplay will be better in some ways but also
lacking originality – and often miles away from what the screenwriter
initially wanted to write. A screenplay is still considered as something
formable, something on which everybody can and should lay their
hands – screenplays are notably still referred to as “blueprints” which
is even less than the architectural layout or design. With the result,
however, that most writers with self-esteem will soon move on to
write novels or direct – which is the profession which attracts all the
attention and respect in the film business, in Germany but also in
Europe in general. As Robert McKee says in an interview (Dennis Eick,
Drehbuchtheorien, UVK 2006) “You don’t teach them, you don’t pay
them, you don’t respect them!” He adds that if he were a screenwriter
in Germany, he too would rather write novels.
german films quarterly focus on writing for the screen
4 · 2006 4