Supported Productions 2000
In addition to the German-American exchange programs, another important task of the RIAS BERLIN COMMISSION is to support German and American radio and television productions which promote mutual understanding. In 2000 the commission selected a total of six productions to receive grants:
- Building Berlin (Saul Schultz Gonzales)
Berlin! No other city in the world has witnessed its architectural landscape change so dramatically over the past decade as the new German capital. This one-hour KCET-TV documentary explores and celebrates the role of American and especially California architects in creating the new Berlin.
- Midtown Community Court (Anselm Weidner)
The Midtown Community Court in Manhattan is a juvenile court which sees itself as part of the community. It also functions as a social-work station and as a research institute, thereby considerably improving various shortcomings of the traditional judicial system.
- Immigration and the Ironic Curtain — Ten years after German Unity (Alexa Dvorson)
10 years after unification: Germany — (not) an immigration country? The number of people in Germany is expected by demographers to diminish by 15 million in the next fifty years, even with a presumed annual influx of 100.000 immigrants.
- Exodus to Berlin (Peter Laufer, Jeff Kamen)
Jewish immigrants continue to arrive in Germany from the former Soviet Union. Germany is now “Heimat” to the fastest-growing Jewish Community outside Israel. Former President Roman Herzog says that there is a chance that Jewish life can once again become an integral part of German culture and society. But synagogues and Jewish cemeteries continue to be among the targets of recent violent extreme-rightist crimes.