Lotte Reiniger’s beautiful silent animation from 1926 is bought to life with a live score by musician and filmmaker Hugo Max. Hugo performs live scores to silent films on solo viola, regularly soundtracking screenings at London’s Prince Charles Cinema and Picturehouse Cinemas across the UK. Prince Achmed brings to life the tales of the Arabian nights and is the oldest surviving feature-length animation, created in a style that has inspired generations. This will be a breathtakingly beautiful event for all ages.
Lotte Reiniger was an animation pioneer, she invented the first multi-pane camera which was then later adapted and patented by Walt Disney. Her distinctive paper silhouette style has inspired and influenced generations of animation and filmmakers.
“The film is an enchanting amalgamation of stories from the Arabian Nights animated in cut paper silhouettes and featuring special effects using sand, wax, and soap. Reiniger designed a multiplane animation table on which she and her team of avant-garde artists innovated and animated over 250,000 frames from 1923-1926. Created in an attic in Potsdam,Prince Achmedpremiered in a private press screening at the Volksbühne Theatre in Berlin on 2 May 1926. It continued on to Paris, where it premiered publicly to rave reviews at the Comédie des Champs- Elysées on 1 July 1926 and returned triumphantly to Berlin, where it enjoyed an extended run at the Gloria-Palast from 3 September 1926. Since then,The Adventures of Prince Achmedhas endured as a dazzling – if often overlooked – monument in film history, an exquisite artifact of Weimar Cinema, and a genre defying experiment in melding international folk art traditions with the technical possibilities of a new medium.” – 100 years of Prince Achmed
Running time:
90 mins