The Global Waste of Food: A Scandal. Why? On what scale? Isn’t there a better way?

A film by Valentin Thurn

We waste almost as much food as we eat, between plough and plate. Every second lettuce is thrown away. In a period of rapidly declining resources and climate change, this situation has to change, and change quickly. Taste the Waste is a television documentary linked to an international campaign via the internet that will allow us to monitor events across the globe. While the website covers the globe, the film will take us into the personal world of the people who are desperately trying to stop this: Hanna Poddig, eco activist from Berlin, Romuald Bokej, dumpster diver from Stockholm, Ahmadou Biyah, garbage collector in Paris and Sarah Wiener, celebrity chef from Austria offer us the small scale examples of the bigger struggle.

Many countries don’t have the slightest idea how much is wasted. Britain made an effort to count the waste pile and came to a staggering 15 million tons of food every year. That means: 484 million unopened yoghurt pots each year, 1.6 billion untouched apples and 2.6 billion slices of bread. We take a look at these stunning quantities with the help of web videos, sent in from all around the globe. More...

Documentary 90 / 45 minutes, production in 2010 and 2011
Supported by Documentary Campus Masterschool
A co-production of THURN FILM and SCHNITTSTELLE

Trailer on Vimeo or YouTube. The filmmakers project on Reelisor

International campaign against food waste:

Website including Blog, Youtube-Channel and Facebook-Site of the campaign

A film by Dr. Britta J. Dombrowe

Almost every 5.000th baby that is born is neither man nor woman. In Germany alone there areabout 80.000 intersexual people. But rare is known about their lives "in between" the sexes.
We accompany theintersexual Christiane Völling, who's female internal sex organs where removed in a surgery without her knowledge when she was 17.
The five year old"girl" Inge will have the chance to make her own decision. After her puberty she can decide: man, woman or in between.
Together with the personal stories of affected people filmmaker Britta Dombrowe will explain the origins and causes for intersexuality in the 52 minute length documentary.
Endocrinologist Prof. Olaf Hiort leads an international network of scientists, who brings their knowledge together for the first time. We accompany scientists in Germany, France and the Netherlands.
The history of medicine and intersexuality is more than difficult – many “hermaphrodites” were treated inhuman in hospitals. A lot of affected people today are sceptical about medical research and especially about medical practices like sex assigning surgeries.

Germany, France, Netherlands 2010, documentary, 52 mn.

A film by Valentin Thurn, Length: 30 minutes

Premiere broadcast: WDR TV, Sunday, 13 Sept. 2009, 4:25 p.m. (“tag 7”)
Rerun: Saturday, 19 Sept. 2009, 9:30 a.m.

Rudolf Schmenger is a government tax investigator in Frankfurt, the hub for banks in Germany. He tracks down a case of fraud in the millions at a major bank. When he and his colleagues want to take action against it, their hands are tied: by their own bosses at the tax office. But Rudolf Schmenger refuses to give in quietly. He fights: for his convictions and for his conscience, at the cost of his career. more...

It’s a nightmare any way you look at it: The day when a judge pronounces that fateful word “in the name of the people”: Guilty! Yet the convicted person knows: It wasn’t me. But no one believes them. 3 cases form the focus of this documentary. Donald Stellwag, who spent 9 years in jail for robbing a bank. A mere 2 weeks after he was set free, the real bank-robber was caught in the act. Harry Wörz, sentenced to 11 years in prison, released as innocent after 5 and now back in court again because the district attorney still feels that he is guilty as charged. And Andreas Kühn, who is trying to get his case retrialed while behind bars. Convinced that Andreas is innocent, his former boss is helping him along the way.

“I would have become a more self-confident person if I had gotten to know Inge earlier. A lot of things would have been easier. I trust her more than I trust others because her help is honorary, which means it comes from the heart,” says 27-year-old Öznur Demir. She had looked for help towards achieving the German equivalent of a junior high-school diploma. And found Inge Alexy, a 69-year-old pensioner, at the project “Senioren-Lotsen” (‘Senior-Citizen Guides’). The honorary ‘godmother’ helps the young Turkish woman learn German and in her search to find a vacancy for vocational training.

A film by Valentin Thurn and Sabine Goette
Length: 45 minutes, ARTE 2008, international distribution: Telepool

The worldwide spread of new superbacteria is making doctors worry. The most widespread and dangerous among these hospital germs is called MRSA (multi-resistant staphylococcus aureus). In Germany alone, 15,000 patients are infected with it each year; twice that figure in France. As the name implies, MRSA is resistant to commonly prescribed antibiotics. And this germ is becoming more and more aggressive. The number of medications that can still be deployed effectively against it is sinking from year to year. MRSA can lead to wound infections, pneumonia, sepsis, and can often be fatal. Throughout Europe, around 50,000 people die due to this killer germ each year.
Superbacteria like MRSA have been around for more than 40 years, but in countries like Germany or France the problem was underestimated for a long time. The consequence: The germ disperses itself so heavily that today clinics can barely keep it in check. Even the strictest preventive hygiene procedures are unable to drop the risk of infection during an operation to zero.
Ever since penicillin was discovered, doctors have relied on antibiotics to effectively fight bacterial infection. Yet as soon as a new drug was found, a few years later strains of bacteria existed that were already resistant against it. Their march onward proceeded fastest above all in those countries in which antibiotics were used as generously as possible. In contrast, fewer supergerms exist wherever they were dispensed more frugally and in a targeted manner.
Film-makers Valentin Thurn and Sabine Goette investigate the question: What is being done at European hospitals to stop the spread of hospital germs? How have doctors and staff in the Netherlands managed to reduce the number of illnesses due to MRSA to almost none? How do these new bacteria spread, germs against which no antibiotic around offers relief anymore? What hope is research offering in terms of vaccines? And: How are patients coping with the fact that they were infected with a superbacteria at a hospital and probably will never be rid of it again?

2009 Journalism Award of the ARGUS foundation for the conservation and development of antibiotics

When Anna learns from her mother that she was conceived via a sperm donor, the shock lames her at first. For weeks she gazes at family photo albums, constantly comparing her face in the mirror with those of her sisters and the father who raised her. The question of the stranger in her life won’t let her go. To date around 100,000 children were conceived with the help of a sperm donor. But as young adults, when they want to learn something about their genetic fathers, what they mostly encounter are insurmountable obstacles. And yet, the knowledge about one’s origins forms a key pillar in having an identity all your own. This feature accompanies the young woman on her quest to find the man whose genes she bears.

A film by Britta Dombrowe and Valentin Thurn
Length: 30 minutes, Executive Producer: Angelika Wagner (WDR), 2008

“Hey, this bread is just fine!” Hanna exclaims, and she’s right about that. It looks appetising and has been sealed properly in plastic wrap. Nothing is apparent that makes it any different from the other loaves on the supermarket shelves, except that the 21-year-old has just fished it out of the rubbish. It’s been quite a while since Hanna bought her food at supermarkets: She does her food shopping at the dumpsters behind them instead.
“Dumpster diving” is the term these self-appointed recyclers of the left-over and discarded have given to their way of refusing to participate in the consumption cycle propagated by today’s throwaway society. Not out of need, out of personal conviction.
Concrete figures on just how much food is thrown away in Germany do not exist. At the wholesale market in Cologne alone, up to 10 tonnes accumulate on any normal market day. There are various reasons for this: Sometimes the printing on the label is sloppy, other times the refrigeration during transport didn’t comply with the standards. And yet, frequently it’s simply cheaper for wholesalers and retailers to toss out the food and purchase it new than to rent warehouses. “Then all that stuff, and I mean cases of it, lands in the bin,” is a fact that Jens from Cologne knows only too well. His time spent “diving” has meanwhile completely cut him from the ties that bound him to what was once a bourgeois existence. “I don’t have to bend over backwards for anybody, but freedom like this can get to be pretty tough.”
We accompany these recyclers of the left-over and discarded on their forays into “for-free land”. What kinds of freedom has their chosen lives brought them? What types of limits are they confronted with in terms of health, socially or even politically?

Video (approx. 10 min.)