Milestone Film and the British Film Institute present “She was born with magic hands.” — Jean Renoir on Lotte Reiniger A Milestone Film Release PO Box 128 • Harrington Park, NJ 07640 • Phone: (800) 603-1104 or (201) 767-3117 Fax: (201) 767-3035 • Email:
[email protected] • www.milestonefilms.com The Adventures of Prince Achmed Die Abenteur des Prinzen Achmed (1926) Germany. Black and White with Tinting and Toning. Aspect Ratio: 1:1.33. 72 minutes. Produced by: Comenius-Film Production ©1926 Comenius Film GmbH © 2001 Primrose Film Productions Ltd. Based on stories in The Arabian Nights. Crew: Directed by ........................................Lotte Reiniger Animation Assistants..........................Walther Ruttmann, Berthold Bartosch and Alexander Kardan Technical Advisor..............................Carl Koch Original Music by..............................Wolfgang Zeller Restoration by the Frankfurt Filmmuseum. Tinted and printed by L'immagine ritrovata in Bologna. The original score has been recorded for ZDF/Arte. Scissors Make Films” By Lotte Reiniger, Sight and Sound, Spring 1936 I will attempt to answer the questions, which I am nearly always asked by people who watch me making the silhouettes. Firstly: How on earth did you get the idea? And secondly: How do they move, and why are your hands not seen on screen? The answer to the first is to be found in the short and simple history of my own life. I never had the feeling that my silhouette cutting was an idea. It so happened that I could always do it quite easily, as you will see from what follows. I could cut silhouettes almost as soon as I could manage to hold a pair of scissors.