The EFA Studios or Halensee Studios were

film studios A film studio (also known as movie studio or simply studio) is a major entertainment company or motion picture company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to make films, which is handled by the productio ...

located in the

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

suburb of

Halensee Halensee () is a ''locality'' (''Ortsteil'') of Berlin in the district (''Bezirk'') of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Halensee was established as a villa and tenement settlement in about 1880, in the suburb of Wilmersdorf, which became part of Great ...

. They were a prominent centre of

film production Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, casti ...

in the silent and early

sound era A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...

. Constructed in 1919 after the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, they were part of a wave of modern studios that used artificial lighting rather than the earlier glasshouse studios that relied on natural light. Early productions included ''

The Head of Janus ''Der Januskopf'' () is a 1920 German silent film directed by F. W. Murnau. The film was an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde''. Little is kn ...

'' by

F.W. Murnau Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe; December 28, 1888March 11, 1931) was a German film director, producer and screenwriter. He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at t ...

. They were located close to

Berlin Zoo The Berlin Zoological Garden (german: link=no, Zoologischer Garten Berlin) is the oldest surviving and best-known zoo in Germany. Opened in 1844, it covers and is located in Berlin's Tiergarten. With about 1,380 different species and over 20,2 ...

and were sometimes also known as the Zoo Studios. In 1921 the Europäische Film-Allianz (EFA) took over the studios. Led by Paul Davidson, former head of

PAGU The Projektions-AG Union (generally shortened to PAGU) was a German film production company which operated between 1911 and 1924 during the silent era. From 1917 onwards, the company functioned as an independent unit of Universum Film AG, and was e ...

, the company had ambitious plans to challenge the largest film companies in Europe and America. The company produced several

epics The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) is a set of software tools and applications used to develop and implement distributed control systems to operate devices such as particle accelerators, telescopes and other large sci ...

directed by

Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch (; January 29, 1892November 30, 1947) was a German-born American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as ...

and featuring two of Germany's biggest stars of the era

Pola Negri Pola Negri (; born Apolonia Chalupec ; 3 January 1897 – 1 August 1987) was a Polish stage and film actress and singer. She achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film for her tragedienne and femme ...

and

Emil Jannings Emil Jannings (born Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, 23 July 1884 – 2 January 1950) was a Swiss born German actor, popular in the 1920s in Hollywood. He was the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in '' The L ...

. After the EFA outfit folded Lubitsch, Negri and several other key figures emigrated to the United States. Nonetheless the studios continued to be known as EFA. Several films with the popular actress

Henny Porten Frieda Ulricke "Henny" Porten (7 January 1890 – 15 October 1960) was a German actress and film producer of the silent era, and Germany's first major film star. She appeared in more than 170 films between 1906 and 1955. Biography Frieda Ulrick ...

were shot there. In 1925 the studios shifted to the nearby Cicerostrasse, with the redesigned studios constructed by the architect Jürgen Bachmann. A variety of

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

producers used the facilities. In 1930 the Halensee Studios were converted to produce

sound film A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...

s in line with the rest of the film industry. They remained in use during the

Nazi era Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

until they were destroyed during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

References

Bibliography

* Allred, Mason Kamana. ''Weimar Cinema, Embodiment, and Historicity: Cultural Memory and the Historical Films of Ernst Lubitsch''. Taylor & Francis, 2017. * Ganeva, Mila . ''Women in Weimar Fashion: Discourses and Displays in German Culture, 1918–1933''. Camden House, 2008. German film studios {{film-studio-stub