ABSTRACT
As an umbrella term for films made or commissioned by companies or business associations, “industrial film” stands for a wide array of audiovisual products that are used in the most varied of contexts. This essay concerns a variety of the process film that features the assembly of vehicles, namely films made for factory tours that were produced for Volkswagen AG in Wolfsburg and also used there. The commissioned films produced for the Volkswagen Group encompass a broad spectrum of safety films, internal research films, advertising and product films, informational films for schools, and films on traffic education, motor sports, the history of the factory, and environmental protection. The factory-tour or visitor film therefore constitutes only a small segment of the company’s film production, which furthermore is largely limited to the years between 1980 and 1992. 1 I am interested here in the visitor film as one element within a larger ensemble of representational processes which served and still serve to show the manufacturing of cars and its results to potential customers. During the 1980s and early 1990s, factory-tour films were screened for guests before the tour; today, shorter product and advertising films are integrated into the commercialized tour of Autostadt Wolfsburg.
