The Adventures of Prince Achmed - Letterboxd 100 Animation
Channel: Daniel Goldhorn
Date: 28/12/2021

It's time to review 100 of the best animated films ever made (according to Letterboxd at least) and no better place to start than at the very beginning of animation history!

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The Adventures of Prince Achmed (known as Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed in German) is a 1926 German animated fairytale film by Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film; two earlier ones were made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani, but they are considered lost. The Adventures of Prince Achmed features a silhouette animation technique Reiniger had invented which involved manipulated cutouts made from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera. 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.

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

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