The Adventures of Prince Achmed

The Adventures of Prince Achmed
Title card
Directed by
Written byLotte Reiniger
CinematographyCarl Koch
Music byWolfgang Zeller
Distributed byComenius-Film GmbH
Release date
  • 23 September 1926 (1926-09-23) (Germany)
Running time
  • 65 minutes
  • (at 24 frames/s)
CountryGermany (Weimar Republic)
Languages
Box office$100K[1]

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (German: Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed) is a 1926 German animated fairytale film by Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film.[2] (Two earlier ones had been made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani, but they are considered to be lost.[3]) The Adventures of Prince Achmed features a silhouette animation technique Reiniger had invented that involved manipulated cutouts made from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera.[4] The technique she used for the camera is similar to Wayang shadow puppets, though hers were animated frame by frame, not manipulated in live action. The original prints featured color tinting. Reiniger also used the first form of a multiplane camera in making the film,[5] one of the most important devices in pre digital animation.[6]

Several famous avant-garde animators worked on this film with Lotte Reiniger, among them Walter Ruttmann, Berthold Bartosch, and Carl Koch.[7][8]

The story is based on elements from the One Thousand and One Nights written by Hanna Diyab, including "Aladdin," "The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Perī-Bānū", and "The Ebony Horse."

  1. ^ "The Adventures of Prince Achmed".
  2. ^ Madeleine, Anna (19 January 2015). "Phillip Johnston / The Adventures of Prince Achmed review: silent film revived with music". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 May 2024.
  3. ^ Bendazzi, Giannalberto (1996). "Quirino Cristiani, The Untold Story of Argentina's Pioneer Animator". Animation World Network. Archived from the original on 28 September 2013. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
  4. ^ Lenburg, Jeff (2009). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons (3rd ed.). New York: Checkmark Books. p. 157. ISBN 978-0-8160-6600-1.
  5. ^ "The life of Lotte Reiniger". Drawn to be Wild. BFI. Archived from the original on 3 March 2001. (an extract from Pilling, Jayne, ed. (1992). Women and Animation: a Compendium. BFI. ISBN 0-85170-377-1.)
  6. ^ "How Disney's Iconic Multiplane Camera Changed Animation | No Film School". nofilmschool.com.
  7. ^ Reiniger, Lotte (1970). Shadow Theatres, Shadow Films. London: BT Batsford. ISBN 978-0-7134-2286-3.
  8. ^ "Lotte Reiniger's Introduction to The Adventures of Prince Achmed" (PDF). Milestone Films. 2001. pp. 9–11. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 November 2009. Retrieved 25 September 2013.