The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is commonly claimed to be the first animated feature film. However over ten years before in 1927 a 23 year old Berlin born avant-garde artist, Lotte Reiniger designed the exquisite "silhouette film", The Adventures of Prince Achmed, loosely based on the "1000 Arabian Nights".

Peter Tack of the San Franciso Chronicle writes: "The images, most of them, gorgeously detailed silhouettes, are dazzling Nights" The silhouette animation, primitive and utterly sophisticated at the same time, advances the story involving Aladdin and his lamp, plus a magical horse, a sorcerer, a princess and an ogress, in mesmerising fashion.

Lotte Reiniger's art is a unique source of eternal fascination. She has been considered has one of the greatest artistic figures working in the cinema and rightly so, she is a pioneer in the history of the animated film.
The subject matter, is not difficult to locate she would be the first to confess that her greatest love was the magic of the fairy tale.

In the word of the British Film Institute: "Only the cinema screen can do justice to her unique and fragile art"