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Women Pioneers of Silent CinemaFilm 16 of 22
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed
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Lotte Reiniger, 1926: the first surviving animated feature, cut from paper, lit from behind, three years of a woman and a pair of scissors. Prince Achmed, a sorcerer, a flying horse, Aladdin, the Witch of the Fiery Mountain. Carl Koch and Walter Ruttmann on the effects. Germany, the Weimar atelier as a lamp. It is The Arabian Nights told as shadow, and it remains more inventive than most of what CGI did with the same stories. Reiniger died in 1981; the film is the one that outlived the argument about who invented the feature cartoon.
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Women Pioneers of Silent Cinema
Lotte Reiniger wrote and directed this silhouette feature, cutting figures from paper and lighting them from behind for three years (1923 to 1926) in a Berlin attic a banker lent her. The BFI calls it the earliest surviving animated feature; Quirino Cristiani's earlier Argentine features are lost, which is why "surviving" is the honest word. Carl Koch, Walter Ruttmann, and Berthold Bartosch worked the effects under her schedule. A woman ran the production with scissors and a camera, and the crew took a three-year feature seriously because she did.
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Further reading
- EssayMovies Silently Review ★★★★ (opens in a new tab)
- EssayThe Adventures of Prince Achmed (opens in a new tab)
- EssayThe Adventures of Prince Achmed (opens in a new tab)
- EssayLotte Reiniger and The Adventures of Prince Achmed — Media Majlis (Northwestern University) (opens in a new tab)
- EssayThe First Animated Feature Film: The Adventures of Prince Achmed — Open Culture (opens in a new tab)
- EssayThe Art of Lotte Reiniger: The Adventures of Prince Achmed — The Last Drive In (opens in a new tab)
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