Why Should Film and Television Cooperate?: On the Mainz Manifesto

Abstract

The changes in the media landscape that represent challenges to film and television in no way derive solely from the new private media. Rather, these changes are rooted in losses of publicity' inherent in all societal processes. Active counter-production, which is rooted in the cultural mission of television and the film-historical mission of cinema, must gather together the forces of both, for if each acts only on its own behalf, they will probably fail. Therefore, there must be cooperation between film and television. Today, we are witnessingimperceptibly, because for the moment, nothing visible is happening--the speculative phase2 of the New Media. In order to emerge, they need a kind of symbolic flagpole: the satellite. Modern industry no longer experiences such speculative phases, at least not in our part of the world. Speculative phases lead directly to speculative crises: elimination bouts, cut-throat competition, overproduction, obstruction of outlets, bankruptcies--in all, an enormous sacrifice of capital, which today's integrated industry would surely not permit. In the New Media, this atypical development occurs, so to speak, for purely idealistic reasons. Precisely because the object of and the network for this new market still do not exist (heads are not