Classic film factory back in limelight

THE GERMAN movie studios where Marlene Dietrich made The Blue Angel and Fritz Lang created his chilling Metropolis are enjoying a Renaissance after years of being a cinematic tool for despots.

After a moment of glory in the 1920s and 1930s, the Babelsberg Studios near Berlin became a propaganda weapon for the Nazis. Then the kommissars of East Germany moved in to make gripping dramas of love among the tractor plants and mediocre documentaries about grain yields and socialist achievement.

Now, with Roman Polanski's The Pianist taking top prize at Cannes - having been filmed for the most part at Babelsberg - the studios are seeking to reclaim the moniker Hollywood East. Some £100m of business is already on the books and nearby Potsdam has hopes of attracting movie stars on a Beverly Hills, Cannes or Monte Carlo scale.

The studios' climb back came after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Babelsberg was sold by the Treuhand Commission, which was responsible for post-communist privatisation, to Vivendi for £40m in 1992. At that time, it was little more than a rotting hulk. Ten years and £750m later, it has some of the most advanced film production facilities in the world. A woman is now at the helm and, like a famous Austrian before her - Billy Wilder of Some Like it Hot fame worked at Babelsberg - Gabriela Bacher is determined to give Hollywood a run for its money.

'I want to bring in Hollywood know-how to projects reflecting European story sensibility,' she said. One of her major projects is a Jodie Foster work on Leni Riefenstahl, the genius film-maker of the Third Reich who before the Second World War used Babelsberg to polish her classics of propaganda such as Triumph of the Will and Olympia.

Oscar-winning film director Neil Jordan will use the studios for his work Borgia, about the Machiavellian popes, and another six major works are in the pipeline, ready to make use of the five sound stages, 13 film studios and what technicians consider one of the best dubbing studios in the world. 'It is an A-list studio, no question,' said David Picker, a former Paramount and Columbia executive who recently used Babelsberg to create a TV mini-series about Hans Christian Andersen.

Bacher estimates she has spent a fifth of her time in Hollywood trying to lure big-name projects to Germany since her appointment last October. What does attract Hollywood is German cash. Merrill Lynch media analyst Bernard Tubeileh said German film funds financed as much as 20% of Hollywood productions last year. 'The trick is to get the money to come back in the form of Hollywood productions in Germany,' said Bacher.

Many directors and officials of the film studios call Potsdam home. Social Democrat mayor Matthias Platzeck said the studios herald a new era for the town. He wants to transform it into a film and media centre crawling with celebrities.

The first Millionaires' Mile tour bus is already up and running, shuttling visitors round Lake Heiligen. Maps point out where the directors and businessmen live and where the stars of a bygone era shimmered. It is not yet the heady stuff of Los Angeles star tours but Platzeck is a firm believer in the mighty-oaks-from-acorns theory.