The art of Lotte Reiniger

Born June 2, 1899, Berlin; Died June 19, 1989.

Lotte Reiniger spent much of her life creating unique and often amazing silhouette animation. After a short period of at Max Rienhardt's studio, Reiniger began working on intertitle design for Paul Wegener's films at the age of sixteen. Her titles were made of hand-cut silhouettes, and in 1919 she developed this technique to create a complete animated silhouette film. In 1921, Reiniger married Carl Koch, who served as her producer and camera operator for the next 40 years.


Between 1923 and 1926, Rieniger and Koch, with assistance from animators Walter Rutmann, Bertolt Bartosch, and Alex Kardan, created The Adventures of Prince Achmed. One of the world's first feature-length animated films, The Adventures of Prince Achmed displayed Reiniger's ability to create captivating characters through intricate design and an amazingly graceful sense of movement. The film remains unsurpassed as a demonstration of animated art.


With the advent of sound, Reiniger made a series of short films set to the music of Mozart. Through the 1930's, with the rise of Disney and Warner Bros, character-based cel animation became the dominant animation form. As animated cartoons, with their costly and labor-intensive production requirements, became the standard, the works of filmmakers like Reiniger became less marketable. Silhouette animation requires considerable patience and individual skill, but not necessarily the production costs of cel animation, Reiniger was able to continue creating her unique animation until the 1970s.


Her later films produced for television in the 1950s and noticably less sophisticated than her early work, possess a pure cinematic magic that is present in the work of very few animators. Reiniger had skill, vision, and patience, and her films may well remain a unique testament to the potential achievements of the artform. Her films may easily hold their magic for audiences of the future. By patiently creating beautiful silhouette animation based on fable and myth, Lotte Reiniger may have created a legacy of filmwork which will offer entertainment and amazement for the ages.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

1929

Based on stories from "The Arabian Nights." A wicked sorcerer tricks Prince Achmed into riding a magical flying horse. The heroic prince is able to subdue the magical horse, which he uses to fly off to many adventures. While travelling, he falls in love with the beautiful Princess Peri Banu, and must defeat an army of demons to win her heart. The entire film is animated using the silhouette technique, which employs movable cardboard and metal cutouts posed in front of illuminated sheets of glass.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4wc6s_the-art-of-lotte-reiniger-1953-1971_shortfilms

I read Reiniger cut her figures out of black cardboard with a pair of scissors, and joined movable parts with thread in order to animate them. In the years 1923-1926, about 250,000 frame-by-frame stills were made and 96,000 were used in the film. Her husband, Carl Koch, was responsible for the photography in all her films until his death in 1963.

Looking at different ways of using animation, this was a silly idea as we have to use 3 dimensional objects to create our animation. But looking at Teddy Newton's Day and Night I can use the idea of 2D Silhouettes with 3D animation