1926

Lotte Reiniger produced the first feature-length animated film, 'Prince Achmed'. Throughout her career, Reiniger used a single technique to tell fanciful re-workings of traditional fairy tales -- shadow puppets.

Aware of the risk of boredom setting in during 5 reels of moving silhouettes, Reiniger and her assistents devised many ingenious background effects, using multiple glass screens moving at different rates in which scrims, gauzes and painted images could be inserted. All her films reveal the influence of German Expressionism in their expressively abstracted forms, fantastic plots and emotive effects.

Links

Lotte Reiniger
Brief history and filmography

Lotte Reiniger
German site but has some nice stills from the animations

'The life of Lotte Reiniger', Extracted from Women and Animation, a Compendium, edited by Jayne Pilling, published by the bfi in 1992.

'Lotte Reiniger' by William Moritz. Includes pictures, history, timeline

The Silhouette Films of Lotte Reiniger

Motion Capture
General essay by Maureen Furniss

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