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Lotte Reiniger

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Animator

The Resume

    (June 2, 1899-June 19, 1981)
    Born in Berlin, Germany
    Charlotte 'Lotte' Reiniger
    German silhouette artist
    Pioneer in the field of animation on film
    Started out with the Max Reinhardt Theatre Company in the late 1910s
    Works included 'Chasing Fortune,' 'Cinderella,' 'Puss in Boots,' 'Sleeping Beauty,' 'The Heavenly Post Office,' 'Däumlienchen,' 'The Star of Bethlehem,' 'Papageno,' and 'Jack and the Beanstalk'
    Made her first full-length animated feature, 'The Adventures of Prince Achmed,' in 1926, preceding Walt Disney's 'Snow White' by over a decade
    Founded the Primrose Productions company, in 1953, along with her husband and creative partner, Carl Koch
    Extensive collections of her original work can be found showcased at The Stadtmuseum Tübingen and at the National Archives of the British Film Institute (BFI)

Why she might be annoying:

    She jokingly called herself a 'primitive caveman artist.'
    Her ambitions to be a movie actress went unrealized.
    She eventually found her calling drawing out elaborate title cards with silhouettes for her acting troupe's films.
    Her directorial debut was stunted by bad timing: the advent of sound in German films.
    It took her a year to find a distributor for 'Adventures of Prince Achmed.'
    Her work, while beautifully crafted, can strike some as distant and inapproachable.
    While 'Prince Achmed' is usually toted as the 'true first full-length animated film' over 'Snow White,' if you want to be technical about it, Quirano Cristiani's 'El Apostol' predates them both by twenty years (although Disney's project was the first full-length movie to use animation cells).
    Before she came to national attention as the figurehead of an ornate 'Google Doodle' commemorating what would have been her 117th Birthday, she was obscure enough to be regularly confused with Leni Riefenstahl.

Why she might not be annoying:

    Who'd have thunk that a lady could do so damn much with just a pair of scissors and black-board paper?
    Her work was partially inspired by Chinese shadow puppets.
    She designed the original logo for the National Deaf Children's Society.
    She worked with Bertolt Brecht, Jean Renoir and Luchino Visconti at various points in her career.
    She and her husband opposed Hitler and were eventually forced to flee Germany following the rise of Nazism.
    She took a ten year absence from her work following the death of her husband.
    Her film, 'The Gallant Little Tailor,' was awarded a prize, the Silver Dolphin, at the Venice Festival in 1954.
    She continued producing quality work into her 80s.
    She built an innovative predecessor to a 'multiplane camera,' which was able to separate background layers from foreground layers.
    She was honored with the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, in 1979.
    Her work has been paid homage in the work of Bruno J. Böttge, Michel Ocelot, Rebecca Sugar's 'Steven Universe,' and even in Disney's Aladdin (the dick prince that Jasmine's tiger chases off is named 'Prince Achmed').

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 9 Votes: 44.44% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 6 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 14 Votes: 42.86% Annoying