UFA GmbH, shortened to UFA, is a film and television production company that unites all production activities of the media conglomerate Bertelsmann in Germany. Its name derives from Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, a major German film company headquartered in Babelsberg, producing and distributing motion pictures from 1917 until the end of the Nazi era. The name UFA was revived by Bertelsmann for an otherwise unrelated film and television outfit, UFA GmbH.
Karl Gustav Vollmöller was a German philologist, archaeologist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and aircraft designer. He is most famous for the elaborate religious spectacle-pantomime The Miracle and the screenplay for the celebrated 1930 film The Blue Angel, which made a star of Marlene Dietrich.
Babelsberg Film Studio, located in Potsdam-Babelsberg outside Berlin, Germany, is the second oldest large-scale film studio in the world only preceded by the Danish Nordisk Film, producing films since 1912. With a total area of about 460,000 square metres (5,000,000 sq ft) and a studio area of about 25,000 square metres (270,000 sq ft) it is Europe's largest film studio.
Das Mirakel is a black-and white silent German film made and released in 1912, directed by Mime Misu for the Berlin film production company Continental-Kunstfilm GmbH. It was based on Karl Vollmoeller's 1911 play, The Miracle. The film was originally advertised as The Miracle in Britain and the US, but after copyright litigation in both countries it was shown as Sister Beatrix and Sister Beatrice respectively. In Germany it was known as Das Marienwunder: eine alte Legende.
Joe May was an Austrian film director and film producer and one of the pioneers of German cinema.
Die geheimnisvolle Villa is a 1914 silent German detective film directed by Joe May and starring Ernst Reicher. It is the first in the series starring the fictional gentleman detective Stuart Webbs, modelled on Sherlock Holmes. It also features Werner Krauss.
Ernst Reicher was a German-Jewish actor, screenwriter, film producer and film director of the silent era.
Paul Davidson was a German film producer.
Jules Greenbaum was a German pioneering film producer. He founded the production companies Deutsche Bioscope, Deutsche Vitascope and Greenbaum-Film and was a dominant figure in German cinema in the years before the First World War. He is also known for his early experiments with sound films around twenty years before the success of The Jazz Singer made them a more established feature of cinema.
The Miracle (1912), is a British silent full-colour film, using a hand-coloured process similar to Pathéchrome. Produced by Joseph Menchen and directed by Michel Carré, it is among the first full-colour feature films to be made. It stars Maria Carmi, Ernst Matray, Florence Winston and Douglas Payne, and was filmed on location in Austria.
Mime Misu was a Romanian ballet dancer, pantomime artist, film actor and director. In 1912 he wrote and directed the first feature film about the sinking of the RMS Titanic, In Nacht und Eis, released in August 1912 four months after the disaster.
Otto Rippert was a German film director during the silent film era.
The Plague in Florence is a 1919 German silent historical film directed by Otto Rippert for Eric Pommer's Deutsche Eclair (Decla) production company. The screenplay was written by Fritz Lang. It stars Marga von Kierska, Theodor Becker, Karl Bernhard and Julietta Brandt. The film is a tragic romance set in Florence in 1348, just before the first outbreaks in Italy of the Black Death, which then spread out across the entire continent.
The Wooing of Eve or Journey into Adventure is a 1926 German silent film directed by Max Mack and starring Ossi Oswalda, Willy Fritsch and Agnes Esterhazy.
The Tempelhof Studios are a film studio located in Tempelhof in the German capital of Berlin. They were founded in 1912, during the silent era, by German film pioneer Alfred Duskes, who built a glass-roofed studio on the site with financial backing from the French company Pathé. The producer Paul Davidson's PAGU then took control and constructed a grander structure. The First World War propaganda drama The Yellow Passport, the historical comedy Madame DuBarry and the expressionist 1920 silent film The Golem were made there by PAGU.
The Daredevil is a 1931 German crime film directed by Richard Eichberg and starring Hans Albers, Gerda Maurus and Mártha Eggerth.
The Weissensee Studios was a collection of separate film production studios located in the Berlin suburb of Weißensee during the silent era.
Decla-Film was a German film production and distribution company of the silent era, founded by Erich Pommer and Fritz Holz in February 1915.
Ways to a Good Marriage is a 1933 German drama film directed by Adolf Trotz and starring Olga Tschechowa, Alfred Abel and Hilde Hildebrand. It was shot at the EFA Studios in Halensee in Berlin. The film's sets were designed by the art directors Heinz Fenchel and Botho Hoefer. The film was based on the ideas of the sexologist Theodore H. Van de Velde and was in the tradition of the enlightenment films of the Weimar Republic. Although his work had already been forbidden by the new Nazi regime, it was not formally banned until 1937 despite protests by Nazi students in Kiel who were successful in having the film pulled from cinemas there.
