Atlas Film + Media

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Atlas Film + Media
legal form GmbH
founding October 1, 1960
Seat Duisburg , Germany
Website atlas-film.com
Status: October 1, 1960

The Atlas Film + Medien GmbH is an independent film distributor in Duisburg and is considered one of Germany's oldest film company. The core business of the company is the license trade in feature films of international production. As a content provider, Atlas supplies program organizers and network operators. Atlas Film + Medien GmbH has been operating its own DVD label under the name Atlas Film Home Entertainment since October 2010 .

history

The company was founded as Atlas Film + Verleih GmbH by Hanns Eckelkamp. Before he started licensing trading, the entrepreneur owned 12 cinemas in the Ruhr area . It was more by chance that the cinema owner became a film distributor. In the course of a business negotiation, Eckelkamp was unexpectedly offered the rights to the film at 12 noon , which he accepted. This laid the foundation stone for the establishment of Atlas Film + Verleih GmbH on October 1, 1960.

With the film 12 noon , the young company also celebrated a nationwide success. In the course of further planning, the well-known Atlas a logo was designed in the Fritz Fischer-Nosbisch studio by the then studio manager Klaus Küchler. It is the company's trademark to this day. From 1960 to 1963, Atlas brought classics such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame , Children of Olympus , The Holidays of Monsieur Hulot and Arsenic and Lace Bonnets in the cinemas. Atlas not only made with 12 noon the Western in Germany acceptable, but also renovated the genre of the American gangster film as film noir .

In 1963, Atlas Ingmar Bergmans bought Das Schweigen , the most successful film in the company's history. An advertising campaign was designed for the film, which omitted any references to the sexual aspects of the film. With this move, Atlas achieved an FSK approval from the age of 18. As a result, police officers were specially assigned to check ID cards at the cinemas. The film was very controversial. Church officials filed criminal charges against the film on suspicion of pornography. With its controversial topic, the film attracted more than four million viewers to the cinemas and thus brought in sales of 10.7 million German marks.

In the years after 1964, Atlas continued to expand and also made a name for itself in the advertising industry. Atlas produced posters and film booklets, which enjoyed increasing popularity. Atlas was the first company to wrap an advertising pillar advertising a single film: Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush . The artistic aspect of the marketing of films came to the fore. For Silence by Ingmar Bergman, the concept worked, but did not work with other titles that. The expensive campaigns as well as the death in the cinema overwhelmed the company's equity and the company had to file for bankruptcy in 1966.

Atlas resumed work in 1967 with a small 16mm rental company. Under the name Atlas Schmalfilm GmbH , non-commercial cinema work in film clubs and communal cinemas was to be promoted. In the 1970s, Atlas supplied around 3,000 theaters and was able to draw on a program of over 600 films from German and international production. Paul Liwa, who was hired by Hanns Eckelkamp in 1966 , felt it was his duty to maintain film culture in the dying time of the cinema. Under the name “Atlas Film + AV”, Liwa made the company the largest European narrow film distributor in the non-commercial market.

Atlas also increasingly recovered economically. Atlas became a respected label again in the 1970s and 1980s. Atlas films have been shown in theaters, on planes, on television, in hotels and on ships on Super 8 and video. In the late 1990s, Hanns Eckelkamp retired from active business for reasons of age and sold his operating companies. Paul Liwa took over a segment of the Atlas Group in 1997. The company is known today under the name "Atlas Film + Medien GmbH". In October 2010, Atlas founded its own DVD label. Since then, films have been distributed under the name Atlas Film Home Entertainment in cooperation with Koch Media .

Products

In addition to American films, Atlas Film also showed German premieres. In addition to classic and contemporary productions, action films and comedies are also part of the film company's repertoire. The program also includes youth and children's films as well as some westerns and music productions.

Web links

Coordinates: 51 ° 26 ′ 5 ″  N , 6 ° 48 ′ 0.9 ″  E