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Archival Print Of Lotte Reiniger’s Prince Achmed To Be Presented With Otocine’s Live Experimental Music

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January 13, 2006, Los Angeles--REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, presents The Adventures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reiniger with live music accompaniment, Monday January 23, 2005, at 8:00 p.m., the next film in the Jack H. Skirball Screening Series, curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.

The first full-length animated feature in movie history, Lotte Reiniger’s Die Abenteur des Prinzen Achmed (Germany, 1926, 65 min, silent) is a dazzling and sensuous rendering of fables from The Arabian Nights, made with silhouette cutouts set on illuminated glass backdrops. For this special event, REDCAT has secured a rare restored 35mm archival print with on a tinted and toned black-and-white stock. The group Otociné, which uses conventional instruments, objects and recorded material, will perform live on stage during the screening.

The experimental music ensemble Otociné was formed in 1999 for the purpose of providing music for The Adventures of Prince Achmed. The REDCAT performance will include original members of the group – Robert Reigle (saxophones), David Martinelli (percussion), Laura Osborn (flutes, objects), and Kaye Lubach (tabla, voice) -- who will be joined by more recent members: Phil Curtis (computer), Jonathan Grasse (guitar), and Jeff Schwartz (bass). The group will interact with the film by way of improvised music, pre-composed score, sound textures, and various recorded sources. Previous performances by Otociné have taken place at USC Norris Theatre, UCLA Popper Theatre, and Beyond Baroque Performance Space (Venice, CA).

More than 75 years after its highly successful premiere in Germany on September 23, 1926, The Adventures of Prince Achmed still stands as one of the great classics of animation -- beautiful, mesmerizing and utterly seductive. Taken from The Arabian Nights, the film tells the story of a wicked sorcerer who tricks Prince Achmed into mounting a magical flying horse that sends the rider off on a flight to his death. Yet the prince foils the magician’s plan, and soars headlong into a series of wondrous adventures -- joining forces with Aladdin and the Witch of the Fiery Mountains, fighting the sorcerer's army of monsters and demons, and falling in love with the beautiful Princess Peri Banu.

What makes The Adventures of Prince Achmed so impressive is the technique used, not to mention being an independent production and almost entirely the creative work of one woman -- no mean feat in 1926. Lotte Reiniger brought a unique perspective to the look of traditional characters, as she used intricate Eastern details to show off extremely delicate filigree cutting work, a command of the way in which shapes work together and of optical illusions (many scenes are reminiscent of Escher). This creates a fantastical universe in which objects turn into demons, and sorcerers’ shapes shift in a way only possible in silhouette. Human gestures are wonderfully underplayed which endows some of the scenes with an ethereal, erotic quality.

Lotte Reiniger (1899-1989) spent much of her life creating unique silhouette animation. After a short period of time at Max Reinhardt's studio, Reiniger began working on intertitle design for Paul Wegener's films at the age of 16. Her titles were made of hand-cut silhouettes, and in 1919 she employed this technique to create a complete animated silhouette film. In 1921, Reiniger married Carl Koch, who served as her producer and camera operator for the next 40 years.

Between 1923 and 1926, Reiniger and Koch, with assistance from animators Walter Rutmann, Bertolt Bartosch, and Alex Kardan, created The Adventures of Prince Achmed. With the advent of sound, Reiniger made a series of short films set to the music of Mozart. Through the 1930s, with the rise of Disney, Fleischer, and Warner Bros., character-based cel animation became the dominant form, and the work of filmmakers like Reiniger became less marketable. Yet, as silhouette animation requires considerable patience and individual skill but is less costly than cel animation, Reiniger was able to continue in this creative vein until the mid-1970s.

The archival print of The Adventures of Prince Achmed presented at REDCAT is made available by the British Film Institute and Milestone Film and Video. It was restored by the Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt (Germany) -- tinted and printed by L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna (Italy). REDCAT, CalArts’ downtown center for innovative visual, performing and media arts, is located at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Tickets are $8 for the general public, $6 for students with valid ID. Seating is general admission. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office--located at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets, by calling 213.237.2800, or by clicking here.

Upcoming Jack H. Skirball Screening Series, Spring/Winter 2006:

Monday, February 6: Britta Sjögren: In This Short Life
Monday, February 27: Patrick and Michèle Bokanowski: Angel's Flight
Monday, March 13: Jem Cohen: ChainLover Other
Monday, April 17: Allan Sekula: The Lottery of the Sea
Monday, May 1: The Devotional Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky
Monday, May 8: Liu Jiayin: Oxhide
Monday, May 22: Sharon Lockhart: Pine Flat

REDCAT benefits from an endowment created through the generosity of The Walt Disney Company; The Sharon D. Lund Foundation; Robert B. Egelston; Lee and Lawrence J. Ramer; and Dorothy R. Sherwood.

REDCAT's 2005-06 season programming is generously supported by The Herb Alpert Foundation; American Composers Forum of Los Angeles; The Annenberg Foundation; Anonymous; Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund; Barry Blumberg; California Community Foundation; Campari; The Canadian Consulate General, Los Angeles; The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation (Corporate matching gift); CEMAT (Centri Musicali Attrezzati, Rome); City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department; CONACULTA; The Consulate General of the Netherlands, Los Angeles; Margit Sperling Cotsen and Lloyd Cotsen; Cultural Services of the French Embassy; Delphi Capital Management, Inc.; Tim Disney; e-flux; Étant donnés, The French-American Fund for the Visual Arts, a program of the French American Cultural Exchange; Ford Foundation; The French-American Fund for Contemporary Music, a program of FACE; French Cultural Services, Los Angeles; French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Harriett and Richard Gold; Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg; Elyse and Stanley Grinstein; Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater; IIC (Instituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles); The Japan Foundation Performing Arts JAPAN; La Colección Jumex; kurimanzutto; L.A. Louver Gallery, Inc.; The Sharon D. Lund Foundation; Steve Martin; Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam; National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts; National Endowment for the Arts; E. Nakamichi Foundation; Phaedrus Foundation; Vicki Reynolds Pepper and Murray Pepper; The Puffin Foundation, Inc.; Barry Sanders; V. Joy Simmons; The Skirball Foundation; SONORA, in collaboration with Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Italy; Catharine Soros; Eve Steele and Peter Gelles; Dallas Price-Van Breda; Viacom Outdoor; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and White Cube Gallery, London.

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