A Trick of Light

A Trick of Light (German: Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky) is a 1995 German film directed by Wim Wenders. The film was made with the students of the University of Television and Film Munich and is a combination of docudrama, fictional reenactment, and experimental photography to show the birth of cinema in Berlin where Max Skladanowsky and his brother Emil built a projector they called the Bioscop. Plot Part One Gertrud lived with her father Max Skladanowky and her uncles Emil and Eugen in Pankow near Berlin. Her everyday life was shaped by the inventive spirit of her father and uncles. She had a very close relationship with all of them, but especially Eugen, who worked as a clown and magician. Her father has been working long on the invention of a device that can play back moving images. So far, together with Emil, he earns his living mainly by demonstrating dissolving views or magic lanterns at fairs. Gertrud finds this form of entertainment boring and inauthentic and feels she must push them ahead with development. To Gertrud's disappointment her uncle Eugen had to go away because he took a job with the circus. She knew he would be gone for a long period of time. Gertrud doesn't want to believe that and looks in the box her father created. In doing this she accidentally exposes the first set of film strips. Luckily, the second set was kept safe. Max then solved the problem of transporting the film and can proudly present his life size projection of his brother for Gertrud. Others are also secretly interested in Skladanowsky's invention, but the family is able to repeatedly put the spy to flight. Part Two On December 28th 1895, Max Skladanowsky is sitting with his brother Emil in the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris and witnesses the Lumière brothers' demonstration. It is clear to him that his own apparatus is hopelessly inferior to the invention of the French. He remembers the preparations for his own demonstration: Word of the groundbreaking invention has already gotten around in Berlin, and so many artists gather to let the Skladanowskys capture them on film strips in a beer garden. The operators of the well-known vaudeville company Wintergarten on Friedrichstraße got wind of it and are trying to go to Pankow to offer the brothers a business deal. The spy, watching from a distance, tries to find out as much as possible. Emil over hears a thief offering the vaudeville owners his rival production.