Max Skladanowsky

German inventor and early filmmaker

Max Skladanowsky (30 April 1863 – 30 November 1939) 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 a 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.

Born as the fourth child of glazier Carl Theodor Skladanowsky (1830–1897) and 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 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. They returned to Berlin in February 1897, and shot several crowded urban street scenes. The new films were thought to meet the taste of new audiences and were much needed since the older films started to wear out. However, the investments proved to be in vain as a proposed return to the Wintergarten was not approved, their trade license was not renewed as the authorities believed there were already too many film exhibitors active in town, and they managed to find one venue for a second tour. Eventually, the last Bioskop show by the Skladanosky brothers took place in Stettin on 30 March 1897. In 1995, the German filmmaker Wim Wenders directed a drama documentary film Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky in collaboration with students of the Munich Academy for Television and Film in which Max Skladanowsky was played by Udo Kier.

In the Netherlands and the Balkans the word "bioscop" means cinema.