{"id":2280,"date":"2014-04-14T14:08:22","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T13:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/schspin.wordpress.com\/?p=2280"},"modified":"2023-01-21T16:42:29","modified_gmt":"2023-01-21T16:42:29","slug":"kinokinderkarriere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schspin.stieve.com\/gb\/2014\/04\/14\/kinokinderkarriere\/","title":{"rendered":"Cinema, Career, Children?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cinema, Career, Children: Can the Film Industry be called a family-friendly Workplace?<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

This text is much longer than usual, reason being that I have not written on the (in-)compatibility of family life and working in the film industry up to now, so I had to assemble some basic data.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The other day I was reading the title story \u201cHIM AGAIN\u201d of the German trains magazine mobil <\/a>(of Deutsche Bahn, the March issue). \u201cWotan Wilke M\u00f6hring<\/strong> is one of the busiest actors in Germany and everybody is watching him. Someone working as much as him certainly needs a little break. mobil<\/strong> is using it for a relaxed talk on children and career, German film and on what it feels like being on a roll<\/em>.\u201d
\n46-year-old Wotan Wilke M\u00f6hring<\/strong> has three little children and is indeed very much present on German TV and in the cinema, in 2013 we saw him in the criminal detective series TATORT, as lead in two films in the cinema, and in 6 televisions movies of the week on ZDF \/ German channel 2.
\nM\u00f6hring belongs to a minority, because he is very busy filming and because he has three children. 6 out of 10 acting people in Germany are childless, and of those with children only 14 % have 3 or more, and only 2 % have 4 or more children (B\u00fchrmann et al., 2010).
\nInterestingly quite a few well-known German actors have large families: Devid Striesow<\/strong> (4 children), Til Schweiger<\/strong> (4 children), Axel Prahl<\/strong> (4 children), Jan-Josef Liefers<\/strong> (4 children) and J\u00fcrgen Vogel<\/strong> (5 children) for example, and, a little older, Uwe Ochsenknecht<\/strong> (4 children) and Helge Schneider<\/strong> (6 children). For the top actresses in Germany it\u2019s a different story, most have considerably fewer children or none at all, with Maria Simon<\/strong> and Corinna Harfouch<\/strong> with 4 children each as the exceptions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why is this? Because when dads are standing in front of the camera their partners are looking after the children, but it doesn\u2019t happen the other way around? That fathers not neccessarily are living together with their children but mothers will most of the time, and so the careers are affected differently? That actresses have to be afraid of disappearing from the screen too long in case of a baby break, thus shortening their possible career even more? (the age disharmony <\/a>on German TV results in female roles diminishing rapidly after 40, whereas male roles have their peak at 50 or 55).<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a lot of talk about families in the German TV business whenever the programme or the audience is in focus, and in TV commercials families are a regular phenomenon. But what\u2019s it like within the industry, how family-friendly is television as a workplace<\/strong>?
\nThe Federal Organization of Filmmakers Associations held a large-scale survey last year, the results of which have been published recently as \u201cstatus report 2013 – survey on the current work situation within the different branches of the film industry\u201d. 1.543 people took part, giving a total of 22.532 answers. The report asserted that<\/span><\/p>\n