In 1911, the film production company Deutsche Bioscope bought the current site in Babelsberg and built its first glasshouse film studio (early studios designed to take advantage of natural light) in Neubabelsberg. The company had been originally formed by
Jules Greenbaum in 1899 and incorporated in 1902. As his business increased, Greenbaum made a deal with the chemist Carl Moritz Schleussner of the photochemicals firm Schleussner AG in
Frankfurt/Main. Carl Schleussner had been involved since 1896 in producing negative film stock for
Röntgen photography soon after its discovery. In February 1908 Carl Schleussner bought a majority share in Deutsche Bioscop as a film manufacturing, duplicating and sales operation, for a two thirds share of 140,000
marks, with one third provided by Jules Greenbaum and his brother Max. Ownership of Deutsche Bioscop was transferred to Schleussner AG and registered on 27 February 1908: Schleussner bought out the Greenbaums' remaining share of Deutsche Bioscop in 1909. The first filming in Babelsberg began as early as February 1912 for
The Dance of Death by Danish director
Urban Gad. In 1920 the Deutsche Bioscop Gesellschaft merged with
Erich Pommer's Decla-Film GmbH to form "
Decla-Bioscop". In 1928, Decla-Bioscop merged with
Universum Film AG (Ufa) which had been founded in 1917. This company built the large studio (which is now known as the "Marlene Dietrich Halle") in 1926 for the major film production of
Metropolis by
Fritz Lang. The "
German Expressionism in film" is closely connected with Babelsberg. Cameraman
Karl Freund invented the so-called "
Unchained camera technique" while working on the film
The Last Laugh (1924), directed by
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. Numerous filmmakers such as
Marlene Dietrich,
Alfred Hitchcock and
Billy Wilder learned at that time in Babelsberg and began their world careers here. Spaceflight owes director
Fritz Lang and the film team of the science fiction silent film
Woman in the Moon (1929), completely made in the Babelsberg studios, a famous achievement: the
countdown was born in Babelsberg. The first sound stage in Europe, the "Tonkreuz", was built during 1929 in Babelsberg, to make use of the
Tri-Ergon sound-on-film process to which Ufa acquired the rights. Ufa's first successful full-sound film
Melodie des Herzens / Melody of the Heart with
Willy Fritsch was shot in the "Tonkreuz" and in Hungary in 1929, although this was followed in April 1930 by the premiere of
The Blue Angel (which was made at Babelsberg) by
Josef von Sternberg, with
Marlene Dietrich and
Emil Jannings in the main roles. In the 1930s and 1940s, Babelsberg was famous for its music and
revue films, such as
Congress Dances (1931),
La Habanera (1937),
The Woman of My Dreams (1944). From 1933 to 1945, around 1,000 feature films were made in the studios and on the studio lot. Under the direction of Hitler's propaganda chief
Joseph Goebbels, the studio churned out hundreds of films including
Leni Riefenstahl's openly propagandistic
Triumph of the Will (1935). The virulently anti-Semitic propaganda film
Jud Süss (
The Jew Süss) (1940), was also made at Babelsberg. On May 17, 1946, the
DEFA (Deutsche Film AG) was established in the
Soviet occupation zone of Germany and Babelsberg Studio was made its headquarters the next year. DEFA became the state-owned film production company in
East Germany, producing over 800 feature films, including 150 children's films until 1990. In addition, over 600 films were made for television from 1959 to 1990. The DEFA period was honored by a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (
MOMA) in
New York City in 2005. After the fall of the
Berlin Wall, the
Treuhand took over the responsibility for the privatisation of the former DEFA. In August 1992, the Treuhandanstalt sold the former
DEFA film studios in Babelsberg to the French group Compagnie Générale des Eaux (later absorbed into
Vivendi Universal). Over the following 12 years the company invested around €500 million updating the studio's infrastructure. In July 2004, Vivendi sold Studio Babelsberg to the investment company FBB (
Filmbetriebe Berlin Brandenburg GmbH), which has
Carl Woebcken and
Christoph Fisser as shareholders. In spring of 2005, the restructured studio presented an initial public offering and began trading on the free market. 2007 was the most profitable year since the studio's privatization in 1992 – 12 feature films were shot at Studio Babelsberg, among them
Valkyrie with
Tom Cruise,
The International with
Clive Owen and
The Reader with
Kate Winslet. In 2008, Studio Babelsberg and Hollywood producer
Joel Silver formed a strategic alliance to produce feature films from the Dark Castle production slate at the world's oldest film studio. International co-productions made in Babelsberg include
Quentin Tarantino's
Inglourious Basterds (released 2009),
Roman Polanski's
The Ghost Writer (2010), Brian De Palma's
Passion (2012),
George Clooney's
The Monuments Men (2014),
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (2014) and
Captain America: Civil War (2016). In 2019, the love story
Dream Factory conquered the European cinema screens. The starting point is true events: the construction of the
Berlin Wall and the closure of the German-German border on August 13, 1961, brings the international co-productions to a close, affects the film studio and is the stroke of fate for the two main characters, a German extra and a French dance double, who are separated by the events. With this, the Babelsberg film studio was working on a part of its own story. Recent co-productions of Studio Babelsberg include
The Matrix Resurrections (2021),
Uncharted (2022) and
Retribution (2022). Recent TV series are
Babylon Berlin (2016–2022),
Dark (2017–2020) and
1899 (2021/2022). In 2021, the largest permanent virtual production stage in Europe was set up in Studio Babelsberg for the major European Netflix production
1899. The studio is operated by Dark Bay GmbH, which is managed by Baran Bo Odar and Jantje Friese. Netflix and the investment bank of the state of Brandenburg financed the project. In order to raise the necessary funds, Netflix has committed to realizing several projects in the Dark Bay studio in the coming years. The Brandenburg Ministry of Economic Affairs funded the project with around two million euros. == Notable films shot at Babelsberg Studios ==