Female Film Pioneers: Lotte Reiniger
More than a decade before Walt Disney released “Snow White” — often cited as the first animated feature — the German animator Lotte Reiniger completed “The Adventures of Prince Achmed,” which used hand-cut paper silhouettes photographed against a tinted background to tell a fanciful story of enchantment and danger.
In Berlin in the 1920s, Reiniger was part of an international circle of artists and intellectuals that included Bertolt Brecht and Jean Renoir. She made a handful of live-action films and a series of short sound movies based on operas and classical music. Most of that work is lost, but “Prince Achmed” and the silent shorts that survive testify to the power of her technique, a haunting, painstaking and expressive form of animation with roots in ancient puppetry and shadow theater.
From “You Know These 20 Movies. Now Meet the Women Behind Them” by Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott for the New York Times; Photo from ullstein bild/Getty Images
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