31 Facts About Lotte Reiniger

Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger was a German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation.

Lotte Reiniger's best known films are The Adventures of Prince Achmed, from 1926, the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, and Papageno.

Lotte Reiniger worked on more than 40 films throughout her career.

Lotte Reiniger was born in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin on 2 June 1899 to Carl Reiniger and Eleonore Lina Wilhelmine Rakette.

Lotte Reiniger translated her love of acting to her silhouette puppetry in order to create her unique and fanciful recreations of her favorite plays and fairytales.

Lotte Reiniger eventually convinced her parents to allow her to enroll in the acting group to which Wegener belonged, the Theatre of Max Reinhardt.

Lotte Reiniger began by making costumes and props and working backstage for Wegener's play productions.

Lotte Reiniger started making silhouette portraits of her classmates and the actors around her, which intrigued Paul Wegener and led to her future collaborations with the director.

The first film Lotte Reiniger directed was Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens, a five-minute piece involving two lovers and an ornament that reflects their moods.

Lotte Reiniger continued to work on short films and advertisements during this time.

Lotte Reiniger made six short films over the next few years, all produced and photographed by her husband, including the fairytale animation Aschenputtel, based on the Brothers Grimm telling of Cinderella.

Lotte Reiniger asked her to make a feature-length animated film.

Lotte Reiniger developed a predecessor to the multiplane camera for certain effects.

Lotte Reiniger attempted to make a third animated feature, inspired by Maurice Ravel's opera L'enfant et les sortileges, but was unable to clear all of the individual rights to Ravel's music, the libretto, and an unexpected number of copyright holders.

When Ravel died in 1937, the clearance became even more complex and Lotte Reiniger finally abandoned the project, although she had designed sequences and animated some scenes to convince potential backers and the rights-holders.

Lotte Reiniger worked on several films with British poet, critic, and musician Eric Walter White, who wrote an early book-length essay on her work.

Under the rule of Hitler, Lotte Reiniger was forced to make propaganda films for Germany.

Lotte Reiniger continued to work on and off over the years, her last film being 'The Rose and the Ring,' released in 1979.

Lotte Reiniger provided illustrations for the 1953 book King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green.

Lotte Reiniger later visited the United States, and began making films again soon after.

Lotte Reiniger made three more films, the last of which, Die vier Jahreszeiten, was completed the year before she died.

Lotte Reiniger was awarded the of the Deutscher Filmpreis in 1972; in 1979 she received the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Lotte Reiniger died in Dettenhausen, Germany, on 19 June 1981, at the age of 82.

Lotte Reiniger had a distinct art style in her animations that was very different from other artists in the time period of the 1920s and the 1930s, particularly in terms of characters.

Lotte Reiniger utilized the technique of metamorphosis often in her animations.

Lotte Reiniger considered animation's separation from the laws of the material plane to be one of the greatest strengths of the medium.

Lotte Reiniger's style translated well to her usually chosen subject, Fairytales.

Lotte Reiniger used the music of composers such as Mozart, Bizet, and Offenbach, as well as contemporary artists like Paul Dessau and Wolfgang Zeller.

Lotte Reiniger's films were the first to move animation from solely comedic narratives.

Lotte Reiniger served to be one of the first filmmakers in the 20th century to attempt a portrayal of the queer experience with a pair of openly gay lovers in her film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.

The Filmmuseum Dusseldorf holds many materials of Lotte Reiniger's work, including her animation table, and a part of the permanent exhibition is dedicated to her.