""A TRICK OF THE LIGHT"" "In 1894, I was still little, only five." "A lot of things were already happening in Berlin." "There were no automobiles yet." "And cinema hadn't been invented yet." "But it was in the air, my daddy said." "His name was Max Skladanowsky." "Back then, we had to earn our money on the fairgrounds." "with so called "nebula pictures."" "This is Uncle Eugen." "He tells stories about that." "I found the show to be rather boring... but the audience was trilled." "No wonder, since they were all children." "Behind the curtain, Uncle Emil was whirling around... all by himself." "I thought it didn't look real, because it just didn't move right." "The nicest part was at the end, when Uncle Eugen started to juggle." "All the tricks he could to do!" "I loved my Uncle Eugen like no one else!" "we lived in Pankow, near Berlin." "Our apartment actually was more of a shop." "After work, I was allowed to watch the zoetrope with my friends." "At night we usually stayed up late." "I played with my uncles, so dad could work undisturbed." "He was working on his invention." "It was supposed to become a "bioscope."" "Others were interested in creating such a presentation machine." "But no one was to steal our idea." "That's why my dad hid behind the curtain." "In the fall, something else was going on." "I could smell it." "They tried to confess something to me." "we were going into financial ruin." "For weeks, we were eating potatoes." "But on this night, my uncle and my dad didn't want to eat at all." "They brought it to me gently." "Uncle Eugen had to go on tour the next day." "He had an engagement at the circus." "I was against it and presented mostly factual arguments." "That evening, the mail man brought the long-awaited package:" ""roll film" for dad's invention." "This film was supposed to put dancing Uncle Eugen into our camera." "And dad's bioscope would then bring him back to life." "This sounded too good to be true." "It was on my mind for several nights." "Now, uncle Eugen was supposed to go on film." "we had to go on the roof, because dad said... that we needed a lot of light for our photographic pictures." "Man, were we excited!" "Oh!" "That was scary!" "Thank God Uncle Emil saved the exposure." "It wasn't enough for me." "I wanted to put the clouds into that box." "The second roll film was exclusively for Uncle Eugen." "And then he had to go." "I begged him to stay." "But dad insisted in all seriousness that there were now two uncles... and one of them was hiding in the camera." "A doppelganger of Uncle Eugen in the camera?" "That was a bit scary to me." "I had to check right away." "what a letdown!" "But I took the fraud rather calmly." "Only dad and Uncle Emil said in all earnest... that I had chased away the second Eugen." "But thankfully we had captured him twice." "when they finally showed him to me... he was as small as the "Dancing Lilly" in the zoetrope!" "And he did the same thing over and over." "No, I wasn't going to be brushed off with something like that." "Dad knew that I wouldn't let go." "I wanted to see my Uncle Eugen." "He promised, and I had to insist." "Then they came up with another invention:" "the flip-book!" "what a joke!" "As if they didn't know what size my Uncle Eugen was!" "That's the way he moved!" "I had to have a serious word with them." "Since I kept insisting... dad all of a sudden understood how this thing had to be built." "we worked like slaves... until the sweat was on our brow." "I kept us up to speed." "The bioscope had to be ready... before someone else came up with the idea, or stole ours!" "Spy!" "Finally the time came!" "we solved the discontinuous film transport problem... with a double projector system." "But to explain this would go too far now." "That's only for experts." "That was the way I had pictured it." "Suddenly everything on the wall was like it really was on the roof." "The three of us were quite excited!" "Uncle Emil didn't stop talking about the birth of the cinema... and called the bioscope the invention of the century." "well, now you know who really was the driving force behind all this." "Me!" "HERE LIVED AND WORKED MAX SKLADANOWSKY" "INVENTOR OF THE BIOSCOPE CO-FOUNDER OF CINEMATOGRAPHY" "These are the original photos... and only ones preserved." "Here, this is a picture of dad in 1 895." "Should I say his full name?" "Yes." "Yes." "This is my father, Max Skladanowsky... born on April 30, 1863." "This picture was taken in 1 895... at the time of the Wintergarten presentation." "These are the three Skladanowsky Brothers." "My father on the left, Uncle Emil in the middle... and Uncle Eugen, the older brother, on the right." "These so-called Hohenzollern coats were very elegant... they had a fur lining." "And for fun... they let themselves be photographed from behind." "we all grew up together here in this house." "Dad bought it in 1907... and I still live in the same house." "This picture was taken by my father's friend, Willi Fenz." "It shows my oldest sister Gertrud, my brother Erich... and the one standing in the front, that's me when I was four years old." "I was very proud of my white dress with red pattern... white-red checkered socks and red shoes." "It was very modern at the time." "I was the only one of the siblings that was blonde." "Did you get that, Jürgen?" "Yes, and this is my oldest sister Gertrud." "It was sold as "Doll Cook."" "Here." "These weren't sold like this." "They came in small cardboard cases... and on the outside it would say what it was." ""The Doll Cook" or "The Skat Game"..." ""The Kaffeeklatsch", "The Lovers", and things like that." "These books were manufactured and sold by the thousands." "They made dad a lot of money, more than the film." "The clock strikes." "It was actually the film... which he cut into pieces and patched together." "It was for a "Liebig-Extract" commercial." "Something you put in your soup to spice it up." "They later made stock cubes." "And now they say my sister was the first child star in the world." "That's right." "Grandpa often had these nebula picture shows... and they were such success... that one day a teacher said that he should show them in schools." "Then the demand grew... and he rented big halls and showed them in those halls." "These nebula pictures, the first ones were so bad... and then dad learned glass painting and painted the pictures himself." "This was elaborate, since they were enlarged from a small format... to up to 6.5 feet, so every brush stroke had to be perfect... otherwise you would have seen every mistake in the close-up." "There was the "wonderland of Pyramids"..." ""Air Conquest", "Journey to the North Pole"... and other different, individual things... moving things that dad came up with." ""Fire in the chalet":" "first you had the chalet... then, with a second device, clouds on glass were pushed over it... and then it started to rain." "Then other things were added and taken off with other glass." "It burned, lightning would strike." "All of these things were painted on these glass slides... which were inserted... so lightning flashed, and the chalet started to burn." "The last image was the moonshine hanging above the clouds." "The moon and the burned out chalet." "It was almost like a film, but it was all painted." "And then in '92 he had the idea... to create a film with real life photography." "Mrs. Skladanowsky... your dad had a camera, but no projector, right?" "It didn't exist yet." "He had to invent it." "The first takes... where Uncle Emil is on the roof of the Schönhauer Alice... were already made in '92." "with the same camera?" "Yes, with the same camera." "And he had to create a projecting device, the bioscope." "There was a technical problem..." "Dad had two films... and the picture was constantly moved over to one side... and that's how the movement was created." "This was the so-called intermitted mechanism." "That's what it said on the patent." "And one picture was always dark and the other light?" "Gertrud was born 13 years before you... and lived with your father and the two uncles, right?" "well, she was only a child then." "He used to say that there had been no films then... and that he had ordered celluloid plates from a British company... which he cut into pieces, and then glued them together to make film... that's what he told me." "Glued together or using shoe grommets, I heard." "Yes, because during the show the film was constantly breaking." "This projector was run by hand and sometimes it wasn't on firm ground." "So without grommets, the film would constantly tear." "The movies for the Wintergarten program were shot before." "In..." "Pankow." "In the former "Feldschlösschen."" "This was a garden restaurant people liked to visit." "It had a big dance hall... and he could show the things he shot right there." "It was very laborious... because there was no electricity yet, no lights." "It had to be shot when there was good light... so June and July were the perfect time." "Outside?" "Yes, everything outside." "And all the artists did it for free... because it was free advertising for them." "The most intricate was the boxing kangaroo." "Dad!" "Was it, little one?" "Dad, people from the movies are here!" "Yes, and?" "Don't you want to tell it yourself?" "Gertrud, this is long in the past!" "Who would possibly want to know about this?" "They came because of us!" "It's great advertising." "You think so?" "Well, if you really want me to." "Well, all right." "This is how it was." "1895 was the year... when the first moving images were presented." "All over the world inventors were working on this." "Cinema was in the air... whether it was in our Berlin air or the Parisian air." "In December 1 895... we were in the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines... and watched what the French had to offer." "The Lumière Brothers... with their so-called "Cinematograph"..." ""Graphomates," or something like that." "what the Cinematograph had to offer was great." "Our "Bioscope" couldn't compete with that." "Our dream burst like a bubble." "But for you to really empathize..." "I have to tell you the whole story, step by step." "In late summer we scraped together our last six... so we could do the presentation." "It took place in the garden of the Feldschlösschen restaurant." "My brothers helped me in various functions." "But when I asked Emil to dress up as a boxing kangaroo..." "I was crossing the line." "The best artists that were visiting the city at the time, however... didn't think twice about presenting their talent to us." "Brother Emil was always popular with the ladies." "But now, being in front of the camera, he was even more popular." "And with Josephine, to our dismay... he was struck... completely." "Now we were ready to present... our program to the public." "But before we could present... our invention to the proper establishments, we had visitors." "Dorn and Baron." "The highly regarded directors of the renowned Wintergarten Vaudeville." "Because they heard rumors about our "moving images."" "They wanted to see with their own eyes what this was about." "All the way to Pankow they came... when all the artists would stand in line outside their talent agencies." "They had the biggest curiosities and tricks in the program." ""Bears on the High wire", "King of the Man Eaters"... even singing sea lions were under contract!" ""Moving images"!" "They had never seen anything like that." "They were very excited, because they didn't know this." "Pictures moving on their own... without anything else being there, other than... light." "They hired us on the spot." "Emil and Eugen had never seen so much money in their life before." "Even in the worst dumps... hobbyists were trying to get pictures to fidget." "But their projectors were downright hazardous." "Our worries went up in smoke!" "All of Berlin had to know about the world premiere of our bioscope." "Eugen and Gertrud posted thousands of bills themselves... and repeatedly saw the announcements... for the famed "Serpentine Dance" of Madame Fulla." "She was the biggest sensation at the time in Paris and London." ""The Serpentine Dance" was exactly the act that was missing for us." "The results of the shots were exquisite." "Those were unforgettable days for me... when all of us put together the Wintergarten program." "Eugen composed the accompanying music." "Emil glued the loops together like no one else." "Even Gertrud had to pitch in until deep into the night... so everything was ready by November 1st." "The film material didn't have any perforation yet." "we punched it ourselves... with shoe grommets." "we downright cobbled them together these first loops." "The whole thing was only possible because everyone participated." "Eugen..." "Emil... the little one... and I." "I'm tearing it all apart, right?" "Otherwise it's still the original format... films were cut, pieces were cut out and these are the leftovers." "Since the whole thing was done in secret... we couldn't allow any curious onlookers... much to the chagrin of Emil, who wanted to impress his Josephine." "My advice to Emil was to keep away from women... but it fell on deaf ears." "I only know about the drama from hear-say." "If I had known that Emil was head over heels for this curious woman..." "I never would've hung these film loops... on the laundry line to dry." "No one knew about it, aside from Gertrud, who was playing guard... that Emil shot the Serpentine Dance with Josephine in the crack of dawn." "And even the milk man, gutsy Wilhelm, did not say a word to me." "Berliners were filled with excitement... about this new world sensation." "The bioscope was the talk of the town." "Yes, and then November 1st came around." "while the legs of the Cancan troupe were whirling through the air... we were very nervous behind the screen." "Tension was rising in the hall." "And then came the act right before ours:" "the "levitating virgin" cut in two in the middle." "In the Wintergarten we had "Juggler"..." ""Boxing Kangaroo", "Children's Dance"..." ""Tscherpanoffs", "Grunato Family"... and "The wrestling Match." Six films altogether." "Those were ready by August... but the directors of the Wintergarten... wouldn't show them until November 1st." "Five years we had worked for this moment... and now my fingers were trembling so much..." "I couldn't get the filmstrip into the darn projector!" "Especially when Emil already showed the title of the first film... and things were about to start." "ITALIAN PEASANT DANCE But that darn bioscope... wasn't working." "It just wasn't willing to show even one glimpse." "No wonder." "The bulb had burned out." "we had to buy some time." "Gertrud once again had the life-saving idea... and sent Eugen into combat." "The Dorn and the Baron..." "well, they were very upset!" "They made a great, big fuss and threatened to sue us... said they wanted their money back... if things didn't start happening "immediately."" "Yes, and then it started." "JUGGLER" "One other mishap occurred." "Instead of the kangaroo, I put in the wrong loop." "These were scraps that were not meant for viewing." "So, in the premiere, of all things, we showed not a boxing kangaroo... but a scared marsupial that absolutely did not want to box... trying to escape the ring several times!" "ACROBATIC POTPOURRI" "KAMMARINTZKY TRIO" "WRESTLING MATCH" "SERPENTINE DANCE" "All's well that ends well." "During all this commotion, even I didn't detect the swindle... and did not see the difference between Mademoiselle and Josephine." "Before November 1st, 1895..." "APOTHEOSIS it didn't exist." "while Emil whispered sweet nothings to Josephine in the audience... and I cranked the bioscope until my arm fell off..." "Emil and I stood on stage as our own look-alikes... and accepted the thunderous applause." "All this exaltation brought a tear to my eye behind the screen." "This is the new era!" "This is cinema!" "Two months later we would have had our engagement in Paris." "It was supposed to be the crowning event of the whole thing." "Our bioscope in the "Folies Bergères"!" "But as you can see, it didn't happen." "we were uninvited at the last moment." "They paid our fee in its entirety... but we weren't allowed to have our presentation." "Instead we now celebrate the triumph of August and Louis Lumière." "Their "Cinematograph" is far superior to my bioscope." "Hats off!" "The French just had the better patent... which guarantied better picture quality and movement... than my old double projector system." "That's all water under the bridge now." "The Lumières did not just show a bunch of patched together loops... but long, real-life strips... of almost a minute long!" "That is a real world sensation!" "Keep your head up, Emil!" "There is still plenty to do." "This is just the beginning of cinema!" "we have to solve the problem of color film... and "3-D photography" for which I have gathered a few ideas." "Our premiere happened eight weeks earlier!" "Nobody can take that away from us." "The money and the fame for the cinema goes to someone else... but we were the first... and now you know that too!" "Dad always started something new, once one thing was gone." "If one thing didn't work anymore... when the vivid pictures were no more... he came up with the Plastograph... and then the Mignon Stereo, and later slides." "Could you tell us something about that too?" "Excuse me?" "About this here." "This here, yes." "This is a P.F.A. Film, "Projection For All"." "why did he call it "projection for all"?" "Yes." "Because he later released the glass images... that were projected to the screen." "So a projection for all!" "The slide series." "There were 92 series." "You can say that I have colored, well, thousands of images." "Each page had 24 pictures." "The most I did one day was 1 44 pictures." "That took a lot out of me." "when it came to drawing, I was the best in school." "I got that from dad." "Not so my sisters." "They didn't have an artistic vein in their body." "So my dad always said." "I had a lot of fun." "There was a stand, below was a mirror... then a piece of frosted glass on which the picture was laid." "It was lit from below, and you would use brush and palette to fill it up." "Each series came with a lecture book... in which each image was described in 1 O to 1 2 lines." "So, when someone was to give a lecture they could simply read that." "My dad wrote these lecture books himself." "These are all enlarged photos of him." "You had to look at them with green-red glasses... so the plastics would become visible." "And this photo is as old as I am, 91 years." "These pictures are all from my dad." "They were delivered in albums and in the front was a pocket... which held the glasses, they came with it." "This is also over 80 years old and survived two wars." "This wasn't your only profession." "You did other things too." "Yes, yes." "I went... to the Reimann art school... and I studied drawing for fashion and advertising." "Anything else?" "we have found another photo of you." "Yes, this picture here, that's me." "I designed and sewed that dress myself." "It was white organdy... which was in fashion in '38." "I made it for a summer party." "I prefer that fashion to the one of today." "Beautiful." "I have something else here on the table, what is this?" "This is... what dad had a patent for." "Color photography, photography with artificial colors." "This is a yellow, a blue and a red plate... which were put on top of one another... and then produced a natural color picture." "And the patent was for the emulsion that was in it..." "There should be three colors." "One seems to be missing." "So... he got the patent." "The emulsion was mixed with additives... so different colors would be produced." "Color..." "This is the blue... the yellow and the red... and on each one is the bouquet... and one on top of the other produced the picture." "For this, dad had a patent." "Most people didn't know that." "where did your father spend his last years?" "Here, in this house." "I took care of him." "Dad died of colon cancer, but never spent a day in the hospital." "I took care of him until the very end." "And it didn't start until October, so it was a very short time." "From September... until November 30th... when he died." "Before that, he would still run around." "He just collapsed all of a sudden when the war started." "when my brother was drafted, that took a big toll on him." "He simply collapsed and never recovered." "Do you remember Uncle Emil and Uncle Eugen?" "when my grandfather died, the siblings no longer talked to Emil... because of the inheritance." "I didn't meet Uncle Emil until 1 935... when the sign was put up at the Wintergarten." "Uncle Eugen always said he was a bon vivant." "He spent a lot of time at the race track and things like that." "He was different from the other two brothers." "They were more solid." "This is Uncle Eugen!" "This is the best picture of Uncle Eugen as a clown." "There he was a clown, Eugen." "This must be from..." "This is from the movie..." ""The Nightly Suitor."" "It was a short." "And from the "Virgin of Orleans."" "This is Uncle Eugen, dressed as a virgin... and here too." "This is the parade of admirers." "And those were all working in our company." "This one here, I remember him." "His name was Max Büttner, and he was our butler." "They did it with enthusiasm." "Dad never sold a patent." "He said that, if he couldn't use it, no one else would be able to either." "He was stubborn, and I believe I also inherited that." "This was shot was at the Schlosspark Niederschönhausen." "One of the last photos of my father." "DEDICATED TO THE MANY FORGOTTEN PIONEERS OF FILM" "we saw the very first film ever that had sound." "It was shot in the chicken run." "The chicken run, the chickens cluck, nothing else." "Cut!" "Keep going." "Come on, keep going!" "It's all right." "Dad!" "Dad!" "There are some people here from the film!" "No, kids, no!" "The Lumière Brothers with their so-called Cinematograph..." "Graphomat or something." "Is this Uncle Emil, the other?" "Yes." "He had his hair cut really short." "You didn't see that?" "well, something like that." "This is supposed to be dad?" "Yes." "This is supposed to be dad?" "On the bioscope." "well, you should have asked before." "He never wore glasses." "It's not historically correct." "He looks even smarter with glasses, doesn't he?" "what am I doing here?" "Is it okay, if I lean back this far?" "Okay." "One, 13C, take one." "SPECIAL THANKS THE POTSDAM FILM MUSEUM," "WHOSE LARGE FILM STOCK WE WERE ALLOWED TO SHOOT." "How did you like our movie?" "well... the love story of Uncle Emil... that was..." "How do you call that?" "Artistic liberty during the shoot." "The rest was pretty authentic." "THE END ...UNLESS THEY WANT TO WATCH SOME MORE"