Lotte Reiniger was a pioneer of animated film who created one of the first feature-length films of this kind with THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (1926). Particularly popular are her fairy tale films, in which she brings the fantastic stories and characters vividly to life using her trademark silhouette technique. To mark the 125th anniversary of her birth, we are showing Lotte Reiniger’s CINDERELLA in the latest restoration from DFF. This restoration is based on a print for distribution in the United Kingdom, where Reiniger later settled after the National Socialists came to power in Germany.
On 9 March 1923 the “Film-Kurier” stresses the film’s well-captured atmosphere with its naive romanticism and immanent humour, and praises the design of the silhouettes who grasp the essence of the fairytale perfectly. Each of them becomes a character with its individual life. The English distribution version was initiated by a friend of Lotte Reiniger and Carl Koch: Eric Walter White. This export version of the film was firstshown at a Film Society event in London. It continued to run in London theatres to great acclaim.
Louise Burkart, in: Il cinema ritrovato Catalogue. Bologna 2022
Notwithstanding its hectic and chaotic social environment, or even as a result of the turmoil, Weimar Germany, and Berlin inparticular, emerged as an intellectual and artistic powerhouse – a centre of innovation, outstanding avant-garde culture, creativity and fierce experimentation. Lotte Reiniger’s fairy tale films – such as DORNRÖSCHEN (SLEEPING BEAUTY, 1922) or ASCHENPUTTEL (CINDERELLA, 1922) might seem an insignificant footnote at a time of such forceful and multi-faceted artistic provocations. But like the watercolours and poems by the Expressionist Else Lasker-Schüler, Reiniger’s silhouette films are gentle reminders of the frailty of human nature as well as fundamental and subtle proclamations of the values of humanity and ethical practice as a core of civil society and the precondition for individual fulfilment.
Aneka Meier, Christiane Schönfeld, in: Beyond Prince Achmed. Marburg2022
