Thursday, June 07, 2007

Prince Achmed in Detroit

Animation news on a local note...Lotte Reiniger's silhouette gets cast onto the big screen this weekend (June9-10) as the Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) overshadows the Detroit Film Theater. Oh and did I say that it is a newly restored 35mm offering up to the sun gods with live organ accompaniment! Check out the rest of the summer series and I will see ya there!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh boy. I wish they'd do something like that in Toronto. This is the same print that's on the DVD though, right? I own the DVD (it's wonderful), but I'd love to see this film on the big screen.

As for their question of which was the "first animated feature", my little wikipedia article can help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animated_feature-length_films

;)

Even if "Prince Achmed" had not existed, "Snow White" would still not be the first animated feature - it's the first one in technicolour and in the English language, though.

As it is now, "Prince Achmed" is the oldest SURVIVING animated feature. Quirino Cristiani's films from Argentina have been lost, unfortunately.

margaret atkinson said...

wow! what a great film it is! so glad we got to go!
i am still freaking out about how amazing it was.
thanks, jeff!

Anonymous said...

Human gestures, in particular, are wonderfully underplayed, helping the film throughout, as well as rendering several scenes with an ethereal, erotic quality.