Focus Schools: Documentaries: “Every child has the right to their own image”

Was your time at school a source of joy or sorrow, of knowledge or pressure to perform, of fun or shame? The intimate location of the classroom, especially at so-called hotspot schools, where children from poorer families and/or non-German origins are often among themselves, is a popular filming location not only for sensational TV documentaries, but also for highly acclaimed cinema documentaries. An imbalance arises from the fact that the majority of the audience is more privileged than the families shown – they would probably not allow their own children to be filmed (or only under certain conditions). How do directors deal with their responsibility?

Ruth Beckermann, who shot the film “Favoriten” at a primary school in the former working-class district of Vienna of the same name, answers the question about families’ ability to have a say in the selection of film images (nd interview from September 19th): “Ask yourself the question: what the same people put on the Internet. As a journalist, you don’t ask any questions. You ask a filmmaker who has been filming for three years whether people knew what she was filming or that she was filming.’

In the “nd” interview, director Maria Speth was more willing to provide information about the making of the film “Mr. Bachmann and his Class” (2021), which follows the 6b of a comprehensive school in Stadtallendorf, a migrant-dominated town: “Of course there was also a request from the class and from Dieter Bachmann to be allowed to take a look at the material, but I told them that they had to rely on me to do it according to their wishes. I wanted to achieve self-forgetfulness and not self-reflection.” Some students, she admits, had difficulty “seeing aspects of their personalities or their appearance (…) objectified on the screen, so to speak.”

While there are strict requirements for underage actors in feature films, documentaries that show children in their everyday lives do not fall under child labor protection, which Martina Huxoll-von Ahn, deputy managing director of the Child Protection Association (DKSB), finds “highly problematic”. Guidelines for documentaries involving children and young people are still missing in the film industry’s child welfare concepts.

»Who asks the children? The parents or teachers who agree with the film are not the right ones. An outside person with media education expertise should be there.”

Martina Huxoll-von AhnDeputy Managing Director of the Child Protection Association

So is a declaration of consent from the parents before filming sufficient? “Every child has the right to their own image,” Huxoll-von Ahn explains to “nd”. »I don’t want to deny that there are sensitive journalists or filmmakers, but the questions are: Do I show the child pixelated, do I show him from behind? Can conclusions about the living environment be drawn from the recordings?”

Now this is not about undoubtedly degrading depictions like in the documentary “Parent School” (2018), which shows the brutal treatment of psychosomatically ill children in a clinic, or formats like “Super-Nanny” (RTL), against which the DKSB protests inserted. Pixelation would not be practical for film works of art that rely on the lively expression of children’s faces and their personalities. The films discussed here approach the children empathetically and do not reduce them to their school performance.

Nevertheless, for Huxoll-von Ahn it is of central importance: »Who asks the children? The parents or teachers who agree with the film are not the right ones. An outside person with media education expertise should be there. Children can certainly have fun with such projects, but you have to work out with them whether and how much they want to participate, and they must be able to opt out at any time. Normally the families have no overview at all of what is being used and broadcast. They have to have an influence on that.” It must be made clear “that film images, like the pictures that parents post of their children on social networks, remain. When young people apply, some companies do research online, and that could be a disadvantage for a girl who can’t master a math problem in the film.”

Hella Wenders has proven with her long-term studies “Mountain Fidel – A School for All” (2011) and “School, School – The Time After Berg Fidel” (2017) that more participation is possible both at school and during filming whom she accompanies four children at an inclusive elementary school in Münster and their future careers. “In between, we showed the students material and held a workshop in which they made their own cameras so that they could understand how we work,” said Wenders “nd.” »We made the film with the children. We showed the parents and children one step at a time between rough and fine cuts to see if they liked it. It is very important that everyone is on board at all times.«

Beckermann also had “Favoriten” film themselves with cell phones and integrated their videos into the film – a contribution to self-empowerment in everyday school life that is controlled by others. While Wenders also shows the domestic environment, Beckermann does without it. »Some also filmed at home and showed their family. We didn’t use these images, it would have seemed voyeuristic to me.”

In Wenders’ films, the children themselves express what bothers them about school. Criticism of the education system is formulated in “Favoriten” and “Mr. Bachmann and his class” from the teacher’s perspective and is limited (also in interviews) primarily to a lack of German language skills when starting school, a lack of staff and money, and teacher training that is far removed from practical experience. On the one hand, Speth and Beckermann emphasize that they are not educators and are not familiar with the topic; on the other hand, they do not limit themselves to purely observational filming, but instead take sides with their teaching protagonists, who help promote the films, and react sensitively Criticism of their sometimes outdated methods.

For educational scientist Petra Moser, who teaches at the Zurich University of Education, both teachers are far removed from the educational role models that the films market them as: “In both films, children are not raised to be critical, independent people; Rather, behavioral norms are instilled in them with which they please the teacher – in other words, they learn to behave in socially desirable ways. Obedience is the primary goal of education. This does not happen in an obvious way, through shouting or even threats of violence, but rather in a hidden way, accompanied by superficial smiles, lively behavior or “friending”. It’s not just filmmakers who are all too quickly enthusiastic about this and believe they have found the school of the future.«

According to Moser, the trailer for “Favoriten” already reveals “a school practice that, for example, demands apologies that are based neither on insight nor on remorse. I can’t imagine that there is a teacher training institution that teaches its students something like this. The fact that this is not uncommon in practice is due to a university practice gap that is particularly evident in stressful everyday school life: then teachers often fall back into patterns of action that are all too familiar to them from their own childhood, more familiar than that those who learned them at universities. One way to counteract this would be to place greater emphasis on biography work at universities.

In this respect, the films reveal a lot about real everyday school life and its limits, despite and because of their blind spots – the insufficient criticism of the system and the lack of participation of the children who are exposed to it.

“Favoriten”: Austria 2024. Director: Ruth Beckermann. 118 minutes.
“Mr. Bachmann and his class”: Germany 2021. Director: Maria Speth. 217 minutes.
“Mount Fidel – A School for All”: Germany 2012. Director: Hella Wenders. 88 minutes.
“School, School – The Time After Berg Fidel”: Germany 2017. Director: Hella Wenders. 94 minutes.