Maya the bee and her adventures (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Maya the bee and her adventures |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1926 |
| length | 77 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Wolfram Junghans in collaboration with Waldemar Bonsels |
| script |
Curt Thomalla in collaboration with Waldemar Bonsels |
| production | Kultur-Film AG (Berlin) |
| camera | AO Weitzenberg |
| occupation | |
Maya the Bee and Her Adventures is a silent, German cultural film with a game plot, which is based on the novel of the same name published by Waldemar Bonsels in 1912 . Author Bonsels was involved in the design concept for the film.
action
A large beehive stands in the middle of a park in which the old queen bee Helene VIII rules. Not only is a new queen born there on a summer day, but also the Maya the bee , and the experienced bee Kassandra is the midwife. Maja laboriously crawls out of a honeycomb and then immediately joins the buzzing bee colony and finally a honey bearer to explore the outside world and learn her tasks. At the same time, some of the bees are making their way outdoors, as a palace revolution is threatened in the beehive because of the birth of the new queen.
Meanwhile, Maja gets to know the beauty of nature and immediately lands on a flower to pollinate it. She gets to know strange-looking fellow creatures like a little caterpillar , which Maja appears to be like a dragon with a spiky mane and glowing eyes. No less strange but all the more dangerous for Maja is another being, a spider called Thekla, who has stretched out its web to catch and eat such inexperienced beings as Maja.
A dung beetle named Kurt frees them from there in dire need . Hardly again in freedom, the young bee is captured by hornets a little later . Here Maja learns about their plan of attack on her home beehive. With great effort she can free herself from the clutches of the seemingly huge insect relatives and flies back to her people to warn them of the impending attack.
Production notes and trivia
In view of the difficult and time-consuming recordings of the main actors, the viraged film had a lengthy and lengthy production time, which stretched over 21 months in 1924 and 1925. The six-act act with a length of 1944 meters passed the film censorship on January 12, 1926 and was also approved for young people. The premiere of Maya the Bee and Her Adventures took place on March 3, 1926 in the Dresden Capitol. On April 8, 1926, the strip started in Berlin. The reconstructed version was performed again in 2005 as part of the Hamburg CineFest.
Waldemar Bonsels, who was also responsible for the intertitles , staged the short elf scene . Director Wolfram Junghans was a natural biologist . He had constructed a terrarium in which the bees lived in the Berlin Zoo especially for this film .
The film-technical buildings are by Svend Noldan and Albin Grau .
In 1934 Frieß-AG produced a version of the cultural film from 1926 with sound and shortened to 25 minutes. This version is considered lost.
When the Waldemar Bonsels Foundation was looking for the film in 2002, there were only fragments left in Germany. Half of the 1944 meters length at the premiere was missing; the other half of the footage was thought to be lost. However, an almost complete nitro copy of the film was found in the Finnish film archive . The Finnish copy served as the basis for securing the film by the Federal Archives in Berlin. The reconstructed version was shown for the first time at the CineFest Hamburg in 2005 .
For the premiere, Willy Schmidt-Gentner put together a piece of music from existing orchestral music. Florian C. Reithner composed a new piece of music for chamber orchestra for the first DVD release (2012). The film version of the DVD combines a copy from the Federal Archives with a viraged copy from the eye-filminstitut .
Reviews
The film “got a lot of attention in the contemporary press; it was not a great success with the public. "
Paimann's film lists summed up: “What makes this film above many of its kind is the urgency of its images and their masterful technique ... not to mention the admirable directorial work with the tiny actors. The whole thing is not only extremely interesting, but also entertaining, scene by scene even quite exciting in the film sense. The excellent photography should not be unmentioned. "
"Based on motifs from the book of the same name by Waldemar Bonsels, this film gives a haunting description of the bees' habits."
Individual evidence
- ↑ Maya the bee and her adventures on waldemar-bonsels-stiftung.de
- ↑ Maya the bee and her adventures, booklet for the DVD . Seeber FILM Verlag, Klagenfurt 2012.
- ↑ Maya the bee and her adventures on waldemar-bonsels-stiftung.de
- ↑ Maya the bee and her adventures in Paimann's film lists ( Memento of the original from July 8, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
- Maya the Bee and her adventures in the Internet Movie Database (English)