The department had five divisions: film and cinema law, film industry, film abroad, film newsreels, and film dramaturgy. In 1938 the German Film Academy at Babelsberg, the first state-run German training center for film artists, was added as an additional department. The head of the film department also assumed responsibility for the production of certain feature-length documentaries and was in charge of the newsreel Deutsche Wochenschau (German Weekly Review). He supervised the completion of the newsreels and saw to it that they were favorably placed in cinema programs.