Episode 38 - The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926) (with Caroline Ruddell - Live @ Cinema Museum)
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926).
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
Episode 38 comes to you live from the Cinema Museum in Kennington, London, as Chris and Alex take to the stage to discuss the craft and creativity of silhouette animated feature The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926). Recorded in front of a lively audience of animated fantasy fans back in October 2019, the conversation featured very special guest Dr Caroline Ruddell (Programme Lead and Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at Brunel University London), an expert on Reiniger who has published work on the filmmaker in Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres (2018), and the recent anthology The Crafty Animator: Handmade, Craft-based Animation and Cultural Value (2019), of which she is also the collection’s co-editor. Listen as they trace The Adventures of Prince Achmed through a multitude of critical and cultural contexts, including Reiniger’s signature style of 2D cutout animation; gendered discourses of craft and the politics of the handmade; Reiniger’s own ‘forgotten’ status and position at the margins of animated film history; the film’s production during a specific historical moment of upheaval in 1920s Weimar Germany; and how The Adventures of Prince Achmed sits within the traditions of abstract cinema, avant-garde animation, German Expressionism and fantasy storytelling.
Suggested Readings
Galt, Rosalind. Pretty: Film and the Decorative Image. Columbia: Columbia University Press.
Leslie, Esther. 2004. Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde. London: Verso.
Ruddell, Caroline. 2014. The Besieged Ego: Doppelgangers and Split Identity Onscreen. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Ruddell, Caroline. 2018. “Contextualising Lotte Reiniger’s Fantasy Fairy-Tales.” Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres, eds. Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant, 109-125. London and New York: Routledge.
Warner, Marina. 2014. Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wells, Paul. 1998. Understanding Animation. London: Routledge.