Dianne Karenne

Diana Karenne was a very prolific and multifaceted figure, who totally devoted herself to art, being a film actress, scriptwriter, director, producer, but also a film critic, painter and, seemingly, a musician. For a decade she worked in several European countries, moving from Italy in the teens to Germany in the early 1920s, as the national film industries developed. She eventually settled in France in the second half of 1920s, where she played her most well-known role in Alexandre Volkoff’s Casanova, 1927. She was a nomad but, solely for the sake of the art of cinema.
The almost total lack of surviving titles of Karenne’s filmography contributed to her legend. More particularly, up until today only one film, Miss Dorothy, preserved by the Cineteca Nazionale in Rome, and a few fragments from her long and intense career in Italy were still known to exist.
Despite all the efforts made by film historians and scholars, Diana Karenne remains one of the most elusive figures  of Italian silent cinema. She encouraged myths about herself as she scattered conflicting details here and there about her date and place of birth and, especially, her real name.
There are not so many confirmed details and everything so far written about her is, essentially, wrong. We know that she was born for sure between 1891 and 1897 in Kiev, Ukraine. But her actual name was certainly not Leucadia Konstantin (as often has been reported). The most credible theory as to her real identity is that she was the half-sister of Gregor Rabinovitch, who became a famous producer in France, Germany and Italy from the 1920s until the 1950s (this connection is mentioned in some documents held by the descendants). In 1914 she arrived in Italy with the name of Dina Alexandrovna Karen and, shortly after that, she also began using the name Nadezhda Belogorskaya (or Belocorsca) in her private life. She had her breakthrough in cinema in 1916. At the end of her film career, she married Russian poet Nikolay Otzup, also acquiring his surname, and lived in a secluted way until her death which  did  not  occur, as again often reported, in Germany in 1940 under the Allied bombings, but in Lausanne on 18 October 1968 (as proven by her death certificate).

Tamara Shvediuk

Lux Film

Established in 1906 by the film pioneer Henri Joly, La Société des Phonographes et Cinématographes Lux grew rapidly to compete with the other big French production houses. Around the time that Joly had to resign from his position in 1907 due to ill health, Lux had opened a fully equipped film factory at Gentilly. By the end of 1909, Lux was widely established and had representatives in 12 capitals, including Barcelona, Budapest, London, Moscow, New York and Warsaw. Although Lux initially took over the distribution of small foreign independent producers such as Nestor, Aquila, Savoia, its own productions started to suffer in 1913, and by the end of that year, Société Lux was declared bankrupt.
Information about the company and its films remain very limited. In its heyday, directors including Jean Durand and Gérard Bourgeois worked for the company. A number of comedians, such as Paul Bertho (Patouillard), Little Chrysia (Cunégonde) and Zinel (Zizi) also made successful comedy series. Although never credited, the comediennes Sarah Duhamel and Madeleine Aubry also appear in Lux comedies.
Over the course of the seven years that the company existed, Lux produced around 850 films, mostly short comedies, but also some dramas and a few documentaries. Towards the end, films featuring animals seem to have become their selling point.
The comedies were clearly the driving force behind the company. Although revolving around similar plots to those produced by rivals Pathé, Eclipse or Eclair, the Lux comedies have an added quirkiness. The actors act without inhibition, and the comedy doesn’t shy away from exaggeration, absurdism and a certain level of clumsiness. This results in an explosion of creativity that borders on surrealism. Various camera tricks and rich decors are used for greater effect. It is tempting to speculate that at Lux the well-established comedians, who had already worked for other film producers, found the opportunity to remake a film they had shot before, but this time with more creative freedom.

Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi