Starting the Berlinale today ... not in Berlin, but in Potsdam. Studio Babelsberg is celebrating its 100th anniversary at the Berlinale with several exhibitions and a best-of retro. If you've seen a Fritz Lang or F.W. Murnau film --or Inglourious Basterds or Anonymus for that matter--, you've seen Studio Babelsberg, Germany's dream factory. It has persevered through the empire and WWI, the Weimar Republic (back then as famous Ufa), the control of the Nazi's "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda" and WWII, the GDR (as DEFA) and now the globalised capitalism of a united Germany. A highlight is the new presentation this Sunday (to the day 100 years after its premiere) of the first film ever made at Babelsberg, Der Totentanz (released in English as The Dance to Death or The Death Song) with early diva Asta Nielsen. At Filmmuseum Potsdam, silent film expert and head of the Filmmuseum Munich Stefan Droessler, who restored the film from a badly damaged Russian nitrate copy to 34 minutes, half of its original glory, showed us a pre-premiere copy of the risque and murderous love triangle (too risque for American audiences, it turned out when it was released in 1912). The silent "mime drama", as it was billed, in its best moments impresses with complex scene structures and indirect shots -- and the mesmerizing seductress Nielsen.
Your next chance to see Studio Babelsberg: Tom Tykwer just finished shooting his film Der Wolkenatlas (Cloud Atlas) with Tom Hanks and Susan Sarandon.
by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto
