Prometheus film
The Prometheus movie rental und Vertriebs GmbH was an important German film production company on the political left, which consisted and 1926-1931 headquartered in Berlin had. The company had branches in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Munich and Leipzig.
history
Prometheus Film was founded on February 2, 1926 by a group of functionaries of the International Workers Aid (IAH) - Emil Unfried , Willi Munzenberg and Richard Pfeiffer - as the center of organization for proletarian film . The Berlin Prometheus Film was established as a second branch of a company that was founded in Vienna in 1924 but was then deactivated. In contrast to the film cartel "Weltfilm" GmbH , another left-wing film company in Berlin that specialized in documentaries, Prometheus Film mainly produced feature films , including The Living Corpse , Mother Krausen's Journey into Happiness and Kuhle Wampe or: Who Owns the World? Wrote film history.
As a film distributor, Prometheus Film brought Soviet films to Germany, a task for which the International Workers Aid (IAH) had previously made outstanding contributions. It all started with films such as the Battleship Potemkin ( Sergei Eisenstein , 1925), His Warning Call ( Jakow Protasanow , 1925), The Son of the Mountains ( Boris Michin , 1926), The Blue Express ( Ilja Trauberg , 1930) and Fire Transport ( Alexander Ivanov , 1930 ). Bringing out Soviet films in Germany was not only an artistic but also an eminently political event in the second half of the 1920s - a time when the National Socialists were gradually becoming a noticeable figure in public life.
In cooperation with Moscow Meschrabpom-Film , Prometheus Film realized two of the first German-Soviet co-productions in 1928 and 1929.
Shortly before the end of the shooting for Kuhle Wampe or: Who owns the world? the Prometheus Film went bankrupt. The film was completed in 1932 by the Zurich Present-Tense Film Society .
staff
The Prometheus Film was produced by Willi Münzenberg . The production staff - especially directors, scriptwriters and composers - have constantly changed. Repeated cameramen were Karl Attenberger , Phil Jutzi and Günther Krampf .
Actors who repeatedly stood in front of the camera in Prometheus films were Lissy Arna , Siegfried Arno , Gerhard Bienert , Natalja Rosenel , Jaro Fürth , Heinrich George , Margarete Kupfer , Nikolai Malikoff , Hermann Picha , Fritz Rasp , Frida Richard , Lilli Schoenborn , Albert Steinrück , Elza Temáry and Sylvia Torf . Hertha Thiele , Eugen Klöpfer , Werner Krauss and the later Nazi propaganda film director Veit Harlan had individual appearances .
Films The Prometheus Film
- Superfluous people ( Alexander Rasumny , 1926)
- Kladd and Datsch, the unlucky ones ( Phil Jutzi , 1926)
- Miracle of Love ( Lauda von Cardowa , 1926)
- The girl from abroad ( Franz Eckstein , 1926/27)
- Schinderhannes ( Kurt Bernhardt , 1927/28)
- Across Soviet Russia (1927/28)
- Child tragedy / child fate (Karl Lutz, Phil Jutzi , 1927)
- The red front marches ( documentary , Phil Jutzi , 1927)
- 1 + 1 = 3. Before becoming a husband ( Felix Basch , 1927)
- The Living Corpse ( Fyodor Ozep , 1928; German-Soviet co-production)
- Salamander ( Grigori Roschal , 1928; German-Soviet co-production; alternative working title: Counterfeiters / Against the Current / Between Love and Duty)
- Mother Krausen's Journey to Happiness ( Phil Jutzi , 1929)
- Beyond the Road ( Albrecht Viktor Blum , Leo Mittler , 1929)
- Kuhle Wampe or: Who Owns the World? ( Slatan Dudow , 1931/32)
See also
literature
- Günter Agde , Alexander Schwarz (ed.): The red dream factory. Meschrabpom-Film and Prometheus 1921–1936. Bertz + Fischer, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86505-214-8 .
- Jerzy Toeplitz : History of the Film. Volume 1, 1895-1933. Licensed edition of the Henschel-Verlag Kunst und Gesellschaft Berlin, Rogner and Bernhard bei Zweiausendeins, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-8077-0223-7 , p. 440 ff.