User:MinorProphet/Draft subpages/Deutsche Bioscop
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Deutsche Bioscop GmbH, (with many alternative confusing spellings),[lower-alpha 1] later Decla-Bioscop, was a Berlin-based German film production company of the silent era with its origins in 1897 when Jules Greenbaum started a film company under his own name, Greenbaum-Bioscope. He renamed it as Deutsche Bioskop Gesellschaft in 1899, and incorporated it as Deutsche Bioskope GmbH in 1902. After an injection of share capital in 1908 it became Deutsche Bioscope GmbH with more directors on the board.
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These Greenbaum companies produced topical and actualité silent documentary films, along with varieté items: and from 1907 to 1910, early sound films (Tonbilder) incorporating the sound-on-disc format. In competition with Oskar Messter's 'Biophon',[2] which electrically synchronised a gramophone record with a silent film, Greenbaum patented his own invention, the manually-operated Synchroscope (film) and produced hundreds of short sound films of operetta, cabaret, and music-hall routines to show in his own specially-equipped cinemas.
The brief interest in early sound films (originally twice the price of silent films) ended when prices fell substantially and they became uneconomical to make. After a period of financial difficulties Greenbaum sold his interest in the firm completely in 1909 to pursue his own career. The new owners changed the name again to Deutsche Bioscop.[3] From 1911 to 1915 the firm partnered with Paul Davidson's PAGU (Union-Film) to produce many of Asta Nielsen's first films, initially shot at 123 Chausseestraße Berlin; after February 1912 at the specially-built Babelsberg Studio; and for a third series at PAGU's Tempelhof Studios. After WWI it merged in 1920 with Eric Pommer's Decla-Film to become Decla-Bioscop. A final merger occurred the following year (1921) with the giant Ufa conglomerate, again with Pommer as the head of production. Decla-Bioscop continued to release films under its own name until around 1924, after which the Ufa brand assumed its full corporate identity and control over production.
The above companies produced a number of well-known films in the first 30 years of the 20th century, with directors and film stars such as Urban Gad and Asta Nielsen, Otto Rippert, Paul Wegener, Fritz Lang, et al.
The numerous changes of management and company names have led to considerable confusion about which films were produced by which firm or producer. In particular, Greenbaum is often given as producer for Deutsche Bioscop films after he had left the company in September 1909. Greenbaum, a busy man, was concurrently owner of his own separate existing film equipment and cinema theatre businesses Vitascope-Theater Betriebs (1907) and Bioscope-Theater (1908): after leaving Deutsche Bioscope in 1909 he founded another film production company, Deutsche Vitascope (1909), later simply Vitascope (1910), re-constituted as Greenbaum-Film (1915).