German Film and Television Academy

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The painter, filmmaker, and author Peter Weiss was approached to be the director of the school when it was first opened.

The later member of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF), Holger Meins, studied camera for a brief period of time at the school shortly after its opening.

Reinhard Hauff

The dffb was the probably the most liberal film school in the world until Reinhard Hauff took over its direction in 1993. Hauff led an authoritarian and autocratic regime which radically changed the face of the school. During his first year tensions ran high and the student council called for a referundum on specific parts of Hauff's "modernization" plans, which were rejected as being against the specific culture of the school as well as being undifferentiated and ham-fisted. The first year that was subjected to Hauff's new curriculum split into two camps, and the politics reached the level of violent confrontations between individual students. Hauff backed down somewhat in light of the pressure, allowing some of the students unwilling to accept his curriculum to continue to have more liberty than was officially asserted.

In the years to come Hauff would trivialize the role of the student council and effectively neutralize the role of the organ dedicated to the representation of staff interests. At the same time Hauff brought all of his extensive network of film industry contacts to the school. This created the opportunity for the students to meet a great number of the most talented and respected film professionals in Germany. His role in preventing the closure of the school due to efforts by the city of Berlin to reduce its expenitures have yet to be documented. He remained an ambivalent figure and there was considerable relief on the part of many past und current students when the news of his departure was announced. There is no doubt that Hauff exercised an extensive approach of patronage to students he chose to support, while subjecting others to withering and often abrasive, if not senseless, criticism. Many of the students whose work Hauff bitterly opposed went on to win both significant prizes at film festivals at home and abroad. This created the irony of Hauff representing the very films at festivals around the world that he had personally attempted to undermine.