100 years old, yet its copyright only expired five years ago—in the United States. In Europe and other life+70 regions, the film will remain copyrighted past 2050, even though Lotte Reiniger died nearly half a century ago!
johncoltrane [3 hidden]5 mins ago
What's the problem, here?
rob74 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Part of the problem is that it wasn't possible to upload it to YouTube until recently (and someone from Germany could still demand for it to be taken down or made unavailable in Germany), while also, being almost 100 years old, it was not released commercially - which both conspired to condemn it to obscurity.
AnimalMuppet [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The problem is that copyright is supposed to secure for the authors the benefits of a creative work for a limited time. If it's decades longer than the longest human lifespan, that's not "a limited time" in any sense that is meaningful to humans.
madaxe_again [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Says the guy using a registered trademark as his username.
JKCalhoun [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Amazing film. (I discovered it via "1001 Movies to See Before You Die.")
They are jointed paper-cut figures (cut and then fastened with split pins and thread I think), laid out on multiple stacks of glass and ground-glass to simulate depth, and then back-illuminated (just as shadow puppets would be).
It's frame by frame stop-motion capture, for sure.
tokai [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Looks like stop motion Scherenschnitte.
klondike_klive [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Animators (and storyboarders, layout artists, illustrators etc) are still taught to prioritise the clarity and readability of the character's silhouette, although they're usually working with a three quarter view (between side profile and front-on) rather than a profile like the shadow puppets here. Still I can't help thinking this film would be a good object of study.
Some of the forest scenes remind me of the original King Kong in their use of dark foreground shapes and framing devices to give an impression of scale.
Should we say that it's "animated?" I know it's an argument of semantics; yet it's nothing like the hand-drawn animation of early Disney movies.
rob74 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Animation isn't just hand-drawn animation, it's any kind of movie composed from individual still images. And stop-motion animation is a subcategory of that, no matter if you use clay/putty (like in Wallace & Gromit), Lego figures or paper cutouts (like in this case or also on South Park).
yiyus [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Starevich was doing stop motion animated films in 1912: "The Beautiful Leukanida" or "The Cameraman's Revenge".
ginko [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The key part being "feature film". There's tons of animated short films from the 1910s.
acoster [3 hidden]5 mins ago
IIRC, that's the movie they play on loop at the kids section of Landesmuseum in Zürich.
HN.zip
Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928 by Donald Crafton
Personally, I remain impressed to this day with the pioneering work of Winsor McCay, the cartoonist who created Little Nemo. Perhaps the best example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW71mSedJuU
Copies are on YT:
https://youtu.be/7V_8aFQUfBw
https://youtu.be/AbXjEoD_dIE
https://youtu.be/j6DaB0Is4jM
There's a game I did try that used silhouette visuals that are IMO very Reininger-inspired — Limbo.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quikanimate/id6467067883
17 min documentary showing Reiniger's technique/process
Just watched the first couple minutes of The Adventures of Prince Achmed and it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.
It's a filmed shadowpuppet performance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_play
It's frame by frame stop-motion capture, for sure.
Some of the forest scenes remind me of the original King Kong in their use of dark foreground shapes and framing devices to give an impression of scale.
https://youtu.be/j6DaB0Is4jM?t=1720
https://youtu.be/1vNv-pE8I_c?t=72
Should we say that it's "animated?" I know it's an argument of semantics; yet it's nothing like the hand-drawn animation of early Disney movies.
https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/henri-riviere-master-printm...
The Shadow Theatre at "Le Chat Noir" was fairly famous, no?
I was unaware of her.
Thanks!