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In Nacht und Eis (English title: Of Night and Ice) is a 1912 German film about the story of the sinking of Titanic. The filming began during the summer of 1912 and the film premiered that winter. The film's special effects are primitive by today's standards, but were impressive for that time. In the film a small toy model ship hits an ice block in a small pond and sinks. The film contained plenty of fiction, such as fire shooting from the funnels, passengers singing hymns, and exploding overheated boiler furnaces.
The film was produced by Continental Film Studios of Berlin. While most footage was shot at the studios (in a lot behind the building) and the Berlin Fire Department provided water to use for the sinking scenes. Some footage was shot in Hamburg and some was possibly done aboard the German ocean liner Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, then docked at Hamburg. With a running time of 35 minutes, In Nacht und Eis was three times longer than the average film of 1912. Around 1914, the film was deemed lost forever, like many other silent films of that era. Then, in 1998, a German film collector realized he had it in his private collection. Various scenes can be seen in the documentary Beyond Titanic.
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