page_title: Max Skladanowsky
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Max Skladanowsky / Career
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Werbeplakat für Filmvorführungen der Gebrüder Skladanowsky
context_page_description: Max Skladanowsky was a German inventor and early filmmaker. Along with his brother Emil, he invented the Bioscop, an early movie projector the Skladanowsky brothers used to display the first moving picture show to a paying audience on 1 November 1895, shortly before the public debut of the Lumière Brothers' Cinématographe in Paris on 28 December 1895.
context_section_description: Born as the fourth child of glazier Carl Theodor Skladanowsky (1830–1897) und Luise Auguste Ernestine Skladanowsky, Max Skladanowsky was apprenticed as a photographer and glass painter, which led to an interest in magic lanterns. In 1879, he began to tour Germany and Central Europe with his father Carl and elder brother Emil, giving dissolving magic lantern shows. While Emil mostly took care of promotion, Max was mostly involved with the technology and for instance developed special multi-lens devices that allowed simultaneous projection of up to nine separate image sequences. Carl retired from this show business, but Max and Emil continued and added other attractions, including a type of naumachia that involved electro-mechanical effects and pyrotechnics. 
  Max would later claim to have constructed their first film camera on 20 August 1892, but this more likely happened in the summer or autumn of 1894. He also single-handedly constructed the Bioskop projector. Partially based on the dissolving view lantern, it featured two lenses and two separate film reels, one frame being projected alternately from each. It was hand-cranked to transport 44.5mm-wide unperforated Eastman-Kodak film-stock, which was carefully cut, perforated and re-assembled by hand and coated with an emulsion developed by Max. The projector was placed behind a screen, which was made properly transparent by keeping it wet to show the images optimally.
  The Skladanosky brothers shot several films in May 1895. Their first film recorded Emil performing overstated movements on a rooftop with a panorama of Berlin in the background. This was an experimental test, not to be used in their commercial screenings. Their further choice of subjects seemed influenced by the films they probably viewed in the Kinetoscope that was installed in Berlin in March. They filmed various variety acts who where performing in town and had them perform in the gardens of theatres in full sunlight, against a neutral background (usually white, sometimes black).
  Test screenings were held at the Gasthaus Sello in July 1895, attended by some invited friends and colleagues. The directors of the Wintergarten music hall were impressed enough after seeing a screening of the Bioskop to eventually sign the Skladanowsky brothers in September for the substantial fee of 2500 Goldmark. The Skladanowsky brothers would first stage a naumachia show at the Wintergarten, re-enacting an Alexandrian sea battle, in October and from 1 November 1895 until the end of the month they would provide a motion picture show, which was eventually screened 23 times. Their circa 15-minutes picture show was part of an evening program that lasted over three hours, which further included all kinds of variety acts, such as Mr. Thompson and his three trained elephants. In an advertisement for the program, the Bioskop appeared right at the center in an extra bold typeface with the statement "New! The most interesting invention of the modern age". The Skladanowskys showed eight films, varying in length from 99 to 174 frames (circa 6 to 11 seconds if played at 16 fps), looped repeatedly, while a specially composed score was played especially loud to drown out the noise of the machinery. The "Apotheose" film showed the brothers entering the frame from opposite sites in front of a white background, bowing towards the camera as if receiving applause and walking out of the frame again. When their show was finished they replicated the action in person in front of the projection screen. The popular venue was filled to capacity with circa 1500 rich patrons for each evening program, but not all of them watched the films. Reviews favoured the three elephants, but the Bioskop was reportedly well-received with extensive applause and flowers thrown at the screen. However, the Berlin papers were seldom critical about shows due to the revenue of the theatre advertisements they placed.
  After finishing the Wintergarten run of shows, the Bioskop opened in the Hamburg Concerthaus on 21 December 1895 as a single program, without any other acts. O
caption: 1895 poster for Bioscop screenings
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