ORWO

ORWO (for ORiginal WOlfen) is a brand of photographic film products, based in Wolfen, Germany. ORWO was established in East Germany in 1964 as a brand for film and magnetic tape, mainly produced at the former VEB Filmfabrik Wolfen (now Chemical Park Bitterfeld-Wolfen). The Wolfen factory was established by AGFA (Aktien-Gesellschaft für Anilin-Fabrikation) in 1910. In 1936 Agfacolor Neu, the first modern colour film which incorporated dye couplers, was developed at the factory. The division of Germany after World War II saw AGFA divided, into Agfa AG, Leverkusen in West Germany, and VEB Film- und Chemiefaserwerk Agfa Wolfen in East Germany, which eventually rebranded as ORWO. The company was privatised in 1990 as ORWO AG, but film production ceased at Wolfen in 1994 following the liquidation of the company, with its constituent parts closed or sold off. The Industry and Film Museum Wolfen now occupies part of the original factory. One of the successor companies, FilmoTec GmbH, based in Wolfen, was founded in 1998 to produce high quality black and white cinema and technical films under the ORWO brand (trademark rights are held by ORWO Net GmbH). Currently, the ORWO film range incorporates negative film for motion picture production (UN 54 and N 75), duplicating film, print film, sound recording film, and film leaders for the processing and distribution business. In 2020 FilmoTec was brought under common ownership with part of the film coating company InovisCoat GmbH, also based in Germany and with shared Agfa heritage, to offer films for the film industry under the ORWO brand. Subsequently these were branded "Original Wolfen".