A TRICK OF THE LIGHT
1996

Director:
Wim Wenders
with the students
of the HFF, Munich

Screenplay:
Wim Wenders
with the students
of the HFF, Munich

Director of Photography:
Jürgen Jürges

Editor:
Peter Przygodda

Music:
Laurent Petitgand

Cast:
Udo Kier
Nadine Büttner
Christoph Merg
Otto Kuhnle
Lucie Hürtgent-Skladanowsky

Producers:
Wim Wenders
Veit Helmer
Wolfgang Längsfeld

Production:
Wim Wenders Produktion/Berlin
Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film (HFF) Munich
Veit Helmer Filmproduktion/Berlin

Length:
79 min.

Format:
35mm
B&W and Colour

Original Title:
Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky

Original Language:
German

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This film by Wim Wenders and students of the Munich Film Academy deals with the birth of cinema in Berlin, where the brothers Skladanowsky built a projector, the "Bioskop," at the same time as the Lumiere Brothers in France and Edison in America, and thereby co-invented "moving pictures" in their very own poetic, poor, endearing and rather "un-German" way.





The film starts a hundred years ago and it ends in present day 1996 with Max Skladanowsky's daughter Lucie who still remembers her dad and those early days of cinema very well.

The film was shot mostly on an old hand-cranker from the twenties, silent, in the best slapstick tradition.