It’s quite telling that Katja Raganelli chose the animation pioneer Lotte Reiniger as her gateway figure into German cinema’s past. Like Alice Guy-Blaché, she was prolific, and worked in all kinds of formats, including commercials and animated interludes for fiction features. More than Guy-Blaché, though, she was an inventor of forms and techniques whose genius was admired by the likes of Bertolt Brecht. It says a lot about film history that Reiniger remains still a specialists’ darling…
Direction
Raganelli lets Reiniger's own words and shadows speak
Editing
Elegant weaving of 1926 Prince Achmed clips with interviews
Production
Painstaking silhouette reconstructions that honor the craft
Director
Katja Raganelli
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Reiniger's 1926 The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the oldest surviving feature-length animated film—beating Disney's Snow White by over a decade.
Bertolt Brecht was such a fan that he allegedly kept her scissors as a talisman; the documentary reveals her techniques influenced his own 'alienation effect' staging.
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