ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the first self-conscious society of film professionals in Germany, the German Cinema Technological Society (DKG, founded by Guido Seeber in 1919 under inspiration from the American Society of Motion Picture Engineers), which also helped to found the first German film schools. Situating the DKG’s technological focus within larger discourses around technology in the wake of WWI and the Versailles Treaty, the chapter draws on methodologies from the sociology of professions to show how the DKG worked to render intelligible a certain idea of the film “industry” through performative rituals, thereby legitimating the film-technological sector as a key contributor to national prosperity. It also shows how their understanding of the film industry (one based on technological manufacture) came into conflict with another, emerging model of the industry based on trades and labor.
