Lotte Reiniger: Born with Enchanting Hands

Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981) is a much loved figure in the early history of animated film. At an early age Reiniger discovered the Chinese art of silhouette puppetry, and made her first silhouettes for a school performance. Growing up during the early years of cinema, she fell in love with the films of Georges Méliès and Paul Wegener, and found imaginative ways to adapt the craft of silhouette-making and shadow puppetry to the possibilities of animation. Reiniger elicited marvelous effects of motion from the inflexibility of silhouettes, and even introduced cultural quotations from the works of Charlie Chaplin or Josephine Baker into her magical films. Today she is best remembered for the animation masterpiece The Adventures of Prince Achmed. This book--the first on Reiniger in English--reproduces three of her most beautiful silhouette series: versions of Mozart's Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro, and an animal alphabet.