lotte reininger

I am an ignorant little shit. I had to hear about Lotte Reiniger from my own husband in yesterday's comment box.

"Lotte Reiniger, when mentioned at all, is most often brushed off in a single sentence noting that she apparently made a feature-length silhouette film in 1926, The Adventures of Prince Achmed; but since that was in Germany, and silhouettes aren't cartoons, Disney still invented the feature-length animated film with Snow White. Anyone who has seen Prince Achmed wouldn't be convinced by this reasoning, but, alas, only a tiny fraction of the people who see Snow White ever get to see any Reiniger film at all."

Her carreer was hampered by the succes of the sound film and the rise of nazism. Lotte and her husband were identified with leftist politics -they were friends with Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill- and had a hard time fleeing Germany. Despite all that, she left an impressive oeuvre, and if you surf around a bit, there's a quite lot to be found.

In case you're wondering what my sudden fascination with silhouettes is all about, I do have a little plan. I rarely start drawings with sketching, thinking is what I do. Preferably in a bath. I want to draw my daughter's portrait. Otger's portrait already has a fairly dramatic shadow, but I want to give Piffin a wild one. She is goth, so I think I will have her shadow strangle her or something. She'll adore it.

Posted by eliane at June 11, 2004 08:57 PM