Parufamet
Parufamet called the existing 1925-1927 common film distribution of movie companies Par amount, Ufa and Met ro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
When the German Universum Film AG (Ufa) got into a serious financial crisis in the mid-1920s due to commercial mistakes and overpriced prestige productions, it took out a mortgage on the American companies Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and Paramount on December 19, 1925 Ufa headquarters at Potsdamer Platz over 4 million dollars (almost 17 million Reichsmarks). In return, Ufa had to agree to the establishment of a joint lending company, the Parufamet. The purpose of this was to use the German quota regulations , which stipulated that a film distributor had to include a German film in the program for each foreign film, for their own productions. Ufa held a 50% stake in Parufamet, the American partners 25% each.
Contract terms
First contract
The first contract from 1925 stipulated that Parufamet would distribute 50 films from Paramount and Metro Goldwyn Mayer in Germany each year. These had to be shown in around 300 Ufa cinemas for 50% of the season. As a result, Ufa didn't have much room for the theatrical release of its own films. In addition, each year the American partners should include 10 of the best Ufa productions in their rental business so that they can be played in the USA. However, they reserved the right to refuse films, and in fact very few German films made it to American cinemas. Some of them, such as vaudeville or waltz dream , were great successes. Ufa's own distributor, Ufaleih, suffered some loss of income due to the loss of some top films to the US distributors and Ufa itself always had to maintain a certain production volume to cover the import of 50 US productions with 50 German productions.
Second contract
After Alfred Hugenberg took over Ufa in March 1927, new contractual terms could be negotiated on February 11, 1928, which gave Ufa, which had meanwhile been in a difficult financial situation, more leeway. The rule that 20 of the best Ufa films are distributed by Parufamet was dropped. From now on, apart from the 50 American films, only a few Ufa cultural films were to be included in this distribution. Ufa films and their newsreels come to Ufaleih. Instead of 50% of the season, the American films only had to be shown 33.3% of the season. Furthermore, Paramount and Metro Goldwyn Mayer undertook not to set up their own newsreels or their own film production facilities in Germany and not to build or acquire any cinemas. In return, Ufa had to incorporate current newsreel material from the two partners into its own newsreels.
One reason why the two American film companies loosened their contracts was that Ufa should not go under, otherwise fewer American films could be brought to Germany due to the German quota restrictions if fewer films are produced in Germany.
See also
literature
- L'Estrange Fawcett: The World of Film. Zurich, Leipzig, Vienna: Amalthea-Verlag 1928, pp. 122–124 (translated by C. Zell, supplemented by S. Walter Fischer).
- Thomas J. Saunders: Rescue in Loss. The Parufamet Treaties. In: Hans-Michael Bock, Michael Töteberg (ed.): The Ufa book. Frankfurt am Main: Zweiausendeins 1992, pp. 174–179.
Web links
- www.filmportal.de Dream factory and state company - the history of Ufa. The crisis: Parufamet and gigantomania