What do "Metropolis", "The Blue Angel", "Jakob the Liar" --the only GDR production ever nominated for an Oscar--, "Inglourious Basterds", and "Monuments Men" have in common? All have been shot, since its doors opened in 1912, at the Babelsberg Studios just outside Berlin. Tom Hanks and Tom Tykwer just went back there to shoot their latest mega project "Hologram for a King", further putting the location on the map as
Europe's Hollywood.
One of Germany's most celebrated auteurs,
Oscar winner Volker Schlöndorff, was recently honoured for transitioning Babelsberg from centralized communist film production to Western market economy as its director from 1992 to1997.
100+ years of (nearly) uninterrupted film production from Weimar to Nazi Gemany to the East German DEFA to a unified Germany have included many economic and artistic ups-and-downs. At the Berlinale 2014, the "Filmstudios Babelsberg" were more present than ever with three major films.
Europe's larget film factory has become an international brand with big plans for the future, as Berlin's Tagesspiegel reports:
The film studios Babelsberg are as widely represented at the Berlinale as never before. After years of crises Europe’s largest film factory has become an international brand. But that's not enough for the studio owners. They have bigger plans.
2013 was not the worst year for Babelsberg, Europe's biggest film studio. It co-produced five big international productions; three of which will be shown at the Berlinale this year. Never before has there been this much Babelsberg at the festival. The festival will open with Wes Anderson's “Grand Budapest Hotel”. George Clooney’s world war drama “Monuments Men” and a remake of the fairy tale classic “Beauty and the Beast” are also competing. “2013 was good, 2014 will be better," says Christoph Fisser, one of the three directors of the studios, a broad-shouldered man in his mid-fifties with the smile of a film star.
Starting next spring, the Irish director Brian Kirk will be shooting his first feature film in Babelsberg - with Keanu Reeves as the lead. The studios also confirmed what lead actress Jennifer Lawrence accidentally revealed in January: Part III and IV of the American fantasy series “The Hunger Games” will be shot in Babelsberg. Another collaboration between Tom Tykwer and Tom Hanks has been confirmed. Both worked in Babelsberg on "Cloud Atlas” - the most expensive German film production to this date, with a budget of 100 million dollars. Under the direction of Tykwer, Hanks, who raves about Babelsberg in interviews since working there, will play the lead in “A Hologram For the King”, a film adaptation of the novel by David Eggers.
"Babelsberg is admittedly one of the best production locations in the world," says Fisser. "We fought hard for this reputation. But as long as Germany does not offer an internationally competitive funding environment, it doesn’t matter how good we are. We lose big productions that simply get more money elsewhere." In Germany subsidies for film projects are given on the federal level through the German Film Foundation, which has supported nearly 650 movie projects since it was founded in 2007, many of which were co-productions of German and international partners. The Foundation offsets 20% of the production costs invested in Germany. For up to a total amount of four million Euros of grant monies this ratio applies automatically; for amounts above this number a committee decides over a potential top-up grant up to ten million Euros. Beyond this so-called “capping limit” no additional funding is available in Germany—unlike in England, for example, where there is theoretically no limit to the subsidies that can be granted. Many other international locations of the film industry offer more lucrative subsidy ratios and tax advantages than Germany. “Occasionally, for a large film project this can easily mean a difference of 20 million dollars”, explains Fisser. “Naturally, such a production won’t be going to Germany then.”
The view from Fisser’s window is of the studio premises. Through the February fog the silhouette of the old Marlene Dietrich Hall can be seen, which Fritz Lang had built in 1927 for “Metropolis”. This was by far not the first Babelsberg film, but it is the oldest one that to this date is associated world-wide with the Potsdam Film Studios. Over hundred years of film history are laid out below Fisser’s window, and over 25,000 square meters of studio space, 20 giant halls, 10,000 square meters of outdoor space, a 500,000 liter tank for underwater stunts, a passenger plane complete with 120 seats and equipped with cameras, a props stock of one million items and a costume stock of half a million items.
With such qualities Babelsberg has gained a reputation that many people had no longer expected from the old studios when Fisser and his fellow board member Carl Woebcken bought the site in 2004 for a symbolic price of one Euro from the French media company Vivendi Universal. The company had previously bought it from the trust and couldn’t get out of debt. Fisser and Woebcken restructured the firm and went public a year later.
It can be difficult to explain to the German public that the film industry is one that is worth public funding. Thomas Schulz, spokesperson of the Film Funding Institute in Berlin, knows of frequent letters from the taxpayers’ association in which people ask him why, for example, “Inglourious Basterds” gets subsidized even though it is not a German film. What people fail to realize is not only that the movie was filmed at Babelsberg and is a US-German co-production, the profits of which go to both production partners. Moreover, the public tends to overlook that each Euro of the film subsidies equals six Euros of investment in the German film industry. Large film projects have immense economic impact regionally: hotels make money through car rentals and professionals from the service sector as well as the trades sector are temporarily employed on the set. In times of high demand, the 90 employees of the film studios are supplemented by up to 2,500 temporary workers. And in taxes alone, says Christoph Fisser, the studio pays more than it receives in film funding.
If it were up to Christoph Fisser, some day films like “The Hobbit” would be made here at Babelsberg—films with budgets in the hundreds of millions. For now this is still no more than a dream. And yet: here at Babelsberg people have known how to make dreams come true for more than a century.
article by Jens Mühling, abridged from and courtesy of Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin, 2014
image: Entrance to the Filmstudio Babelsberg by Unify
