Germany's film industry making a comeback
The buildings are still there: the cavernous wooden-roofed studio where a 29-year-old Marlene Dietrich donned a silver top hat and suspenders and became a star overnight, and the brick blockhouse from which Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, began his cinematic tirade against the Jews.
Babelsberg, the German film studios that in the 1920s and early '30s won international fame as the Teutonic Hollywood, endured the trials of Nazi rule, the Second World War and Communism. But they emerged almost physically unscathed when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
Yet for more than a decade and a half since, the complex of studio buildings, outdoor sets and warehouses containing the world's largest collection of film props, seemed to hold little more than memories of Nazi brutality, Communist banality and a brief flash of inter-war genius.
Hollywood directors were slow to take up the chances offered by the post-Communist owners and even as recently as three years ago there were fears that Babelsberg would dispense with a 95-year-old tradition of big-screen film-making in favour of television production.
Not any more – this year Babelsberg has achieved what, by any standards, amounts to an astonishing comeback. By the end of 2007 the studios will have produced 11 films in all as well as hosting two semi-permanent daily television soap operas.
Read entire article at Independent
Babelsberg, the German film studios that in the 1920s and early '30s won international fame as the Teutonic Hollywood, endured the trials of Nazi rule, the Second World War and Communism. But they emerged almost physically unscathed when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
Yet for more than a decade and a half since, the complex of studio buildings, outdoor sets and warehouses containing the world's largest collection of film props, seemed to hold little more than memories of Nazi brutality, Communist banality and a brief flash of inter-war genius.
Hollywood directors were slow to take up the chances offered by the post-Communist owners and even as recently as three years ago there were fears that Babelsberg would dispense with a 95-year-old tradition of big-screen film-making in favour of television production.
Not any more – this year Babelsberg has achieved what, by any standards, amounts to an astonishing comeback. By the end of 2007 the studios will have produced 11 films in all as well as hosting two semi-permanent daily television soap operas.