Lotte Reiniger

Scissors from childhood

Lotte Reiniger was born in Berlin and was fascinated by Chinese shadow puppetry as a child. She cut amazingly detailed silhouettes from paper freehand and used them to stage shadow plays for friends. As a young woman she joined actor and director Paul Wegener's circle, making silhouette title cards and small animated effects for films.

How silhouette animation works

Reiniger cut figures from black card and thin lead, joined at the limbs with fine wire so arms, legs and heads could move. She laid them on a glass table lit from below and moved them a tiny amount between each frame, photographed by a camera above. Backgrounds were made of layers of tissue paper and translucent material, giving soft, glowing scenery behind the crisp black characters.

Prince Achmed

Over about three years, Reiniger and a small team including Carl Koch, Walter Ruttmann and Berthold Bartosch made The Adventures of Prince Achmed, based on stories from the Arabian Nights. Released in 1926, it is the oldest surviving animated feature film. The team used layered glass to create depth, an early form of the multiplane idea.

A long career

Reiniger kept working for decades, making fairy-tale shorts such as Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel. She settled in London in 1949, where she made silhouette films for television and worked with the National Film Board of Canada later in life. She also wrote a book on shadow theatre and taught her technique.

Influence today

Her films inspired many later artists, including Michel Ocelot, whose silhouette films brought the style to new audiences. Cut-out animation, now often made digitally, still owes a lot to her. For how layered glass gave depth, read our multiplane camera page, and see our animators A to Z for other pioneers.

Where to start

The restored version of The Adventures of Prince Achmed brings back its original tinted colors and is a great first watch. Her short fairy tales are perfect for families, and films of Reiniger at work show her cutting complex figures freehand at amazing speed.

Did you know? Reiniger often cut her figures without drawing them first, and she worked with ordinary scissors, which makes the lace-like detail in her characters even more impressive. Silhouette animation is also a good technique for beginners, because black paper cut-outs are easy to make and move on a lightbox.

← Chuck JonesOsamu Tezuka →