Out of the Shadows

Lotte Reiniger 18991981 was a German film director and animator best known for The Adventures of Prince Achmed which was released in 1926 and is the oldest surviving animated movie It came out a full eleven years before Disneys Snow White As a little kid Reiniger loved reading fairytales and fell in love with puppetry At school she learned about paperschnitte or papercuts which helped her create her signature style of silhouettes She grew up to make more than forty films throughout her long career most of which were fairytales that used her stopfilm animation technique of handcut silhouettes Reiniger is now seen as the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation and the inventor of an early form of the multiplane camera