Cinema’s 130th Anniversary
Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky (A Trick of the Light)
12/19/2025, 7 PM

A few weeks ago, the 130th anniversary of the Skladanowsky Brothers' first film screening on 1 November 1895 in Berlin's Wintergarten was celebrated. The film showed boxing kangaroos, acrobats and wrestlers; the very first original moving images were still heavily inspired by the circus and varieté shows. Even though Max and Emil Skladanowsky did not go down in history as the actual inventors of cinema – that honour was reserved for another pair of brothers, the Lumière Brothers, who were working in France at the same time – they were nevertheless important pioneers of moving images, which changed the world forever.

Like no other director in Germany, Wim Wenders has repeatedly woven his love of cinema and cinematic history into his films, in quotations, texts or stories. In Lisbon Story, for example, he tells the story of a sound effects artist, and in the road movie Im Lauf der Zeit (Kings of the Road) of a man who saves cinemas by repairing projectors. Thirty years ago, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary, he created his cinematic homage Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky(A Trick of the Light). Together with students from the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen München (University of Television and Film Munich), Wenders shot the film with an old hand-cranked camera in the best slapstick style. 

As a supporting film, we will show the original footage from 1895. On November 1, photographer and showman Max Skladanowsky presented the “Bioskop”, developed together with his brother Emil, at the Wintergarten variety theater in Berlin's Friedrichstraße station. Using their projector, they screened short film scenes on a screen for the first time in Germany to an enthusiastic audience.

To conclude the anniversary year, we want to celebrate the achievements of the film pioneers Skladanowsky with a special cinema experience. We are showing the German premiere of the 4K restored version of Wim Wenders' film. French composer Laurent Petitgand, who has written the music for ten of Wenders' films, will accompany the film live with several instruments and vocals. 

The event takes place in cooperation with the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut und Filmmuseum, Frankfurt, the Wim Wenders Stiftung, Düsseldorf/Berlin, as well as with the kind support of the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation and the Bundesarchiv (The German Federal Archives).