A team of five started an exciting project – and eventually it turned into a film: “At Eye-Level “ (Augenhöhe).
Here is the story: During a session of the 12th intrinsify!me “wevent” in Berlin about the work-life value of the 21st century, the idea grew that you should not only describe everything in words at all times. Instead, you should show it to people – in a film.
Five session attendants remained together and got active. They made the film “At Eye-Level”. I first heard of this project on the Berlin 2015 PM Camp during a great impulse presentation by Ulf Brandes. Later, I saw parts of the film during the Munich 2014 PM Camp. Two of the protagonists playing in “At Eye-Level” are personal acquaintances of mine through PM-Camps.
Thanks to enormously well-used “social media”, the project quickly earned great acclaim, even beyond the internet. The successful crowdfunding for its financing, too, had enjoyed a huge amount of public awareness and was accordingly very successful. The opening night on January, 30th, in Hamburg, too, had a huge audience. More than 400 (!) persons came to watch the film at the Hamburg Museum der Arbeit.
The film is about good topics. Perhaps its professional quality cannot hold a torch to documentaries with similar topics, such as by Geyrhalter, Wagenhofer (among other things the trilogy We Feed the World, Let’s Make Money and Alphabet) or Carmen Losmann (Work Hard – Play Hard). But neither does it need to – it is more a refreshing production on the level of TV reports by the ARD or ZDF, for instance about shipping electric waste to Africa.
The film is about persons acting different roles in their work-lives: entrepreneurs, managers, founders. But above all, it shows employees happy to be working for “good” employers. Because they can, for example, due to innovative working hours models, dispose of their own free time more freely than is common and therefore organize their own lives as they wish.
Unfortunately, though, the highly praised project “At Eye-Level” is also one where not all is gold that glitters. Shortly before the film was finished, two articles about Adidas and Unilever were added to it.
Adidas
Suddenly, you see Christian Kuhna in the film. I first met him at the open-up Camp in Nuremburg. His job with the sports giant is about social media, Moocs and the like and he has a small but very efficient team at his disposal
I am sure that the work-life attitude in Christian’s team is good and modern. Also, I am always impressed by the competence and positive attitude of all the salespersons in Adidas shops. But I am sure this is not true for the huge majority of persons producing for the concern.
Consequently, including Adidas in the film was a source of controversy among “crowd funders”.
Unilever
At the very end of the shooting, Unilever, too, was added. Even as early as the meeting in Munich, I was surprised to find the food giant presented as a positive example. There, Sven Franke – one of the protagonists – told us that Unilever had contacted “At Eye-Level” because they had established contact during the film “WORK HARD PLAY HARD” by Carmen Losmann. In that film, they had not made a particularly good impression and consequently, they wanted to make up for it. Well, no matter what, Unilever definitely is not the best material for this kind of film.
Sven’s reasoning was as follows: they wanted to show that even a huge enterprise can have a few niches where work-life might happen at eye-level.
Well, this might be a matter of taste. To be sure, every huge enterprise also has a few “islands of blessedness”. Even if it is only the team of directors.
However, it is also possible that Adidas and Unilever were included because they are “big names”. Which might have made the producers think makes the film more attractive. This is certainly also an acceptable decision. But if so, you should also communicate it as such.
When talking “big names” and these kinds of ideas, Tomas Sattelberger, too, comes to mind. He, too – just like he also currently seems to be publicly visible all the time – appears in the film. After all, everybody wants to hear and see a repetition of the Saul-Paul story. I do not know Tomas Sattelberger personally, but only from what I read about him in the press. Consequently, I cannot give a valid estimation. But in his roles as director of famous DAX concerns, he did not look like the typical representative for “eye-level” to me.
Well, so much about the small stains on the otherwise clean slate.
Mind you, please not to misunderstand me: I find the topic “eye-level” as formulated by Sven Franke or Ulf Brandes an excellent idea. The same is true for the activity and the result. Also, the enterprises concerned are welcome to the gain in reputation they got from it and I would be happy if those who initiated the project were also reimbursed in a material sense for the huge amount of energy they put behind it.
It is a true delight to discuss the individual film scenes under the “entrepreneurial” light. Especially the founder’s enterprises shown in the film might suggest that a proper firm is only possible where you have the “good tyrant”. The question I ask is: how can the entrepreneurial culture shown in the film also be structurally included in our social system – for instance in the sense of a “democratic enterprise”.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
The picture is not from the film “Augenhöhe – At Eye-Level”. I took it from “WORK HARD PLAY HARD” by Carmen Losmann.
Loading ...