Press Release | Berlin, 07/02/2024

The UFA Film Nights: Strong Women in the City of Millions – Open-Air Screenings on Museum Island

• From August 21 to 23, 2024, the festival will present outstanding Weimar-era silent films with exclusive musical accompaniment
• Tickets on sale now

Berlin, July 02, 2024 – From August 21 to 23, 2024, Bertelsmann and UFA will present the 14th UFA Film Nights, an open-air event on three evenings, set against the spectacular backdrop of Berlin’s Museum Island and accompanied by live music. Long a fixture in Berlin’s cultural calendar, the UFA Film Nights will once again showcase cinematic masterpieces of Weimar cinema at one of Berlin’s most exclusive venues.

The first evening will see the world premiere of the version of Carl Lamač’s comedy SAXOPHON-SUSI – SUZY SAXOPHONE (1928) starring Anny Ondra and Mary Parker, reconstructed and digitally restored by the Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (DFF). The evening will be musically accompanied by The Sprockets film orchestra, based on a composition by their saxophonist Frido ter Beek.

The second evening will feature the 1925 documentary DIE STADT DER MILLIONEN. EIN LEBENSBILD BERLINS – THE CITY OF MILLIONS. A PORTRAIT OF BERLIN, directed by Adolf Trotz. Produced by Ufa’s Cultural Film department, it is considered to be the first feature-length film portrait of Berlin, showing the hectic urban aspects of a city of four million people, as well as its historical and contemplative sides. DJ Raphaël Marionneau will be live at the turntables to provide a soundtrack to the film, which was digitally restored by the Filmmuseum Potsdam.

The UFA Film Nights 2024 will close on Friday with a double feature of two of Ernst Lubitsch’s early films. The evening begins with KOHLHIESELS TÖCHTER – KOHLHIESEL'S DAUGHTERS (1919/20) starring Henny Porten, Germany’s first silent film star, alongside Emil Jannings, Gustav von Wangenheim, and Jakob Tiedke. The second feature is Lubitsch’s ICH MÖCHTE KEIN MANN SEIN – I DON’T WANT TO BE A MAN (1918) starring Ossi Oswalda.

KOHLHIESEL'S DAUGHTERS will be screened in a version digitally restored by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation with the support of Bertelsmann. It will be musically accompanied by the Metropolis Orchestra Berlin with a new composition by Florian C. Reithner, commissioned by the UFA Film Nights. The musical accompaniment to I DON’T WANT TO BE A MAN marks the debut of the five-member Ensemble Narrativ led by Maria Reich and Florian C. Reithner.

Celebrity patrons will introduce each film and provide some historical and societal background to put the films into context.

Tickets are now available for €20 at www.ufa-filmnaechte.de  and at all ticket agencies in Berlin and Brandenburg.

The Schedule at a Glance

Wednesday, August 21, 2024, film starts at 9:00 p.m.
SAXOPHON-SUSI – SUZY SAXOPHONE (1928)
Director: Carl Lamač
Cast: Anny Ondra, Mary Parker, Gaston Jacquet, Olga Limburg, Hans Albers
Production: Hom-Film
Length: Approx. 90 min.
Music: Frido ter Beek and The Sprockets film orchestra

Thursday, August 22, 2024, film starts at 9:00 p.m.
DIE STADT DER MILLIONEN. EIN LEBENSBILD BERLINS – THE CITY OF MILLIONS. A PORTRAIT OF BERLIN (1925)
Director: Adolf Trotz
Production: Ufa’s Cultural Film department
Length: 80 min.
Music: DJ Raphaël Marionneau

Friday, August 23, 2024, film starts at 9:00 p.m.
ERNST LUBITSCH DOUBLE FEATURE
KOHLHIESELS TÖCHTER – KOHLHIESEL’S DAUGHTERS (1919/20)
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Cast: Henny Porten, Emil Jannings, Gustav von Wangenheim, Jakob Tiedke
Production: Messter Film
Length: approx. 60 min.
Music: Florian C. Reithner (composition). Performed by the Metropolis Orchester Berlin, conducted by Burkhard Götze

ICH MÖCHTE KEIN MANN SEIN – I DON’T WANT TO BE A MAN (1918)
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Cast: Ossi Oswalda, Ferry Sikla, Curt Goetz, Margarete Kupfer, Victor Janson
Production: Projektions-AG “Union” for Universum Film-AG
Length: 45 min.
Music: Ensemble Narrativ led by Maria Reich and Florian C. Reithner

UFA Film Nights partners are the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the German Film Institute Film Museum and Apleona. Maz&Movie, Ströer, radioeins and radio3 are the event’s media partners.

As a creative content company with a nearly 190-year history, Bertelsmann is committed to cultural activities at various levels. Its “Culture@Bertelsmann” activities focus on preserving important cultural assets and making them accessible to a broad public, for example through digitization, exhibitions, and concerts. For many years, Bertelsmann has organized the UFA Film Nights, a popular silent film festival in Berlin, and has repeatedly acted as the main sponsor for the digital restoration of important silent films. The Group also owns the Archivio Storico Ricordi in Milan, which houses a wealth of unique testimonies from 200 years of Italian opera history. Bertelsmann is indexing the archive holdings according to the latest standards and making thousands of documents, set and costume designs, libretti, and pieces of business correspondence freely accessible online. For more than 20 years, Bertelsmann’s literary format “The Blue Sofa” has provided authors with a prominent stage for their latest works.

About Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann is a media, services and education company with more than 80,000 employees that operates in about 50 countries around the world. It includes the entertainment group RTL Group, the trade book publisher Penguin Random House, the music company BMG, the service provider Arvato Group, Bertelsmann Marketing Services, the Bertelsmann Education Group and Bertelsmann Investments, an international network of funds. The company generated revenues of €20.2 billion in the 2023 financial year. Bertelsmann stands for creativity and entrepreneurship. This combination promotes first-class media content and innovative service solutions that inspire customers around the world. Bertelsmann aspires to achieve climate neutrality by 2030.

About UFA
UFA is a leading production companies for series and films, shows, and documentaries in the German-speaking world. New and long-running programs produced by UFA reach an average of more than 30 million people every week and are currently available on nearly all TV channels and streaming services. The creative powerhouse bundles the range of its genres under one roof in the UFA Fiction, UFA Serial Drama, UFA Show & Factual and UFA Documentary units. UFA is part of the international production company Fremantle, the global production arm of RTL Group. A company with a long tradition and based in Potsdam-Babelsberg, UFA was founded in 1917 and now has five locations across Germany. Its CEO is Sascha Schwingel.