All posts by Sebastian Reimann

Access America

Mary Kay and Johnny – America’s First TV Sitcom

By Tabea Stöhr and Anne-Sophie Daffertshofer

For the past decades, sit­coms have been omnipresent in our every­day lives. On TV, in mag­a­zines, or on the Inter­net – it’s hard to escape the stars and sto­ry­lines of How I Met Your Moth­er, The Big Bang The­o­ry, or Two and a Half Men. But when did this phe­nom­e­non begin? That’s easy: On Novem­ber 18, 1947, Mary Kay and John­ny, the first sit­com ever broad­cast on Amer­i­can TV, pre­miered on DuMont Tele­vi­sion Net­work. Mary Kay and John­ny was a domes­tic sit­u­a­tion com­e­dy fol­low­ing the real life of new­ly­wed cou­ple Mary Kay and John­ny Stearns. By the time they start­ed the show they had been mar­ried for about one year. The plot focused on the cou­ple build­ing their life togeth­er in the Big Apple with John­ny work­ing at a bank and Mary Kay liv­ing the life of a typ­i­cal house­wife in their Green­wich Vil­lage apart­ment. So what exact­ly made this show extraordinary?

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Best Books & Fabulous Films

Watch and Write! Writing the TV Drama Series

By Kai-Arne Zimny

 

“To cre­ate a tele­vi­sion show out of thin air, with­out any­body pay­ing you,

requires a cer­tain amount of delu­sion, and that’s tak­en me very far.”

Matt Wein­er, cre­ator of Mad Men

 

Do you reg­u­lar­ly watch a TV series? Prob­a­bly yes.

Have you ever con­sid­ered writ­ing one? Prob­a­bly not.

But if you like TV series and love to write, you might want to recon­sid­er. The recent ser­i­al tele­vi­sion land­scape is diverse and of a qual­i­ty as nev­er before. And pro­duc­tion stu­dios are begin­ning to open their gates a tiny crack to meet an ever-increas­ing demand for series ideas and concepts.

In her book, Writ­ing the TV Dra­ma Series:  How to Suc­ceed as a Pro­fes­sion­al Writer in TV, tele­vi­sion writer and screen­writ­ing teacher Pamela Dou­glas offers an approach to learn­ing how to slide through that crack and gain insight into what’s lurk­ing behind those gates.

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Access America

Lessons not Learned

By Markus Ziener

There is a won­der­ful spot west of the city of Frank­furt in Ger­many. It’s in an area well known for its excel­lent white wine, its charm­ing hilly land­scape, and its wel­com­ing peo­ple. It’s called The Rhein­gau. Once you make your way up a hill from Rüdesheim, maybe com­fort­ably using the cable car, a fan­tas­tic view over the riv­er Rhine opens up. From there, the Nieder­wald land­scape park, you can see for miles to the West, over­look­ing the tran­quil Rhine val­ley and even have the illu­sion that you actu­al­ly see France.

“Ger­ma­nia” | pho­to cred­it: Markus Ziener

When I was there not long ago my daugh­ter asked me about the stat­ue named Ger­ma­nia that is hov­er­ing over the plat­form where peo­ple are gath­er­ing for the view. The 34-foot fig­ure is called Ger­ma­nia. In her right hand the lady holds the emperor’s recov­ered crown; in her oth­er she dis­plays the Impe­r­i­al Sword. I explained that the monument’s mes­sage was not a peace­ful one. Only a few years before the inau­gu­ra­tion of the stat­ue in 1883, Prus­sia had just fought anoth­er war with France, unit­ing the Ger­man princes for the first time into a sin­gle nation state. The Ger­ma­nia was noth­ing else but a warn­ing to the French: Stay where you are, don’t even think about com­ing here. This is ours.

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Access America

Transgenerational Transmission of Holocaust Memories and Survival: An Interview with Documentary Filmmaker Ethan Bensinger (Part II)

By Sabrina Völz

Ethan Bensinger speak­ing to a group of stu­dents in an upper-sec­ondary school in Lüneb­urg, Ger­many. | Pho­to cred­it: Sab­ri­na Völz

The fol­low­ing is the sec­ond part of an inter­view with film direc­tor Ethan Bensinger in which he answers ques­tions about the chal­lenges of mak­ing his prize-win­ning Holo­caust doc­u­men­tary, REFUGE: Sto­ries of the Self­help Home,  edu­ca­tion­al projects, and fight­ing anti-Semi­tism today.

 

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Access America

Transgenerational Transmission of Holocaust Memories and Survival: An Interview with Documentary Filmmaker Ethan Bensinger (Part I)

By Sabrina Völz

Ethan Bensinger (mid­dle) dur­ing a 2015 podi­um dis­cus­sion with Holo­caust schol­ar Pro­fes­sor Sven Kramer of Leuphana Uni­ver­si­ty (left) and Dr. Jens-Chris­t­ian Wag­n­er, Direc­tor of the Low­er Sax­ony Memo­ri­als Foun­da­tion. | Pho­to cred­it: Christo­pher Rieckmann

When I first invit­ed film direc­tor Ethan Bensinger to come to Leuphana Uni­ver­si­ty Lüneb­urg, I knew that 2015 would be a spe­cial year for Holo­caust com­mem­o­ra­tion. It marked the 70th anniver­sary of the lib­er­a­tion of con­cen­tra­tion camps all over Europe, among them Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. In light of the human rights vio­la­tions around the globe and the all-too-famil­iar top­ic of geno­cide, Ethan Bensinger’s one-hour doc­u­men­tary, REFUGE: Sto­ries of the Self­help Home (2012), is as time­ly as ever. This impor­tant doc­u­men­tary weaves togeth­er expert com­men­tary, archive mate­r­i­al, and the mem­o­ries of six res­i­dents of the Self­help Home in Chica­go, which was found­ed to give shel­ter and a lov­ing envi­ron­ment to those flee­ing per­se­cu­tion. These last gen­er­a­tions of eye­wit­ness­es to the atroc­i­ties of the Holo­caust recall the expe­ri­ence of Cen­tral Euro­pean Jews before, dur­ing, and after “The Final Solu­tion.” They tell of events (The Night of Bro­ken Glass, Kinder­trans­port), places of ter­ror and geno­cide (There­sien­stadt and Auschwitz con­cen­tra­tion camps), spaces of refuge (Shang­hai ghet­to, Self­help Home) as well as share per­son­al insights about lov­ing fam­i­lies, sur­vival, tear­ful reunions, and healing.

In the first install­ment of this two-part inter­view, Ethan Bensinger speaks can­did­ly about his her­itage, the rela­tion­ship of the Holo­caust to his hybrid iden­ti­ty as well as his moti­va­tion for mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the Self­help Home.

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