Thoughts about early cinema

Author: mgrottendieck

  • A touch of inspiration

    While Random Finds: Change of heart already glanced at Continental-Kunstfilm-Gesellschaft (in this article abbreviated as CF) regarding their administrative tasks this short interlude will shed some light on a rather creative or not so creative mode of operation. CF produced well over 100 films of which the majority were made between 1912 and 1915.1 That…

  • The “Kino-Bibliothek”

    Advertisement in Erste Internationale Film-Zeitung.1 As the surge of the Monopolfilm in Germany began at the end of the year 1910 it transformed the way cinemagoers perceived films. A transition from a program based approach to a centric one pivoting around feature films took place and alongside promotional practices changed with it. While it was…

  • Change of heart

    Continental-Kunstfilm-Gesellschaft was a Berlin based production company that emerged in spring of 1912.1 Originally founded as Schmidthässler-Film-Gesellschaft on October 23, 1911, by Max Rittberger and the actor Walter Schmidthässler the company was later converted to Continental-Kunstfilm-Gesellschaft (in this article abbreviated as CF).2

  • “Kino-Bibliothek” publications

    List of publications that were published under the Kino-Bibliothek label by the Filmtext-Verlag, Berlin.

  • Bei „Onkel Martin“!

    Doing research in trade journals I once came across an article featuring photos of the premises of a distributor. Before that I actually knew almost nothing about distributors apart from the obvious historic legacy like ads, texts and promotional material that usually revolves around the films rather than people and the space behind it. Therefore…