The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Lotte Reiniger
Location: Cooperative Car Park, Duns
Germany / 1926 / 66 min / Cert. PG

Based on 'The Arabian Nights,' this classic children's film follows the quest of the heroic prince and his flying horse, made entirely of silhouettes.

Hailed as the first full-length animated film in the history of cinema, Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which premiered in Germany in 1926, is an astonishing labour of love, which took three years and 300,000 camera shots to complete.

Reiniger - celebrated pioneer of silhouette animation - created all the characters and cut out every single silhouette herself, colour-tinting the frames by hand. Taking the ancient art of shadow-plays, as perfected in China and Indonesia, she adapted it brilliantly for the cinema.

This enchanting, hand-crafted film has been superbly restored, with a new recording of the original magnificent orchestral score.

Showing with:

The Cardboard Orchestra
Scott Buchanan Barden
UK / 2009 / 10min

An egotistical, highly-strung conductor brings to life his rather flat players in a dramatic, absurd performance of Gustav Mahler's masterpiece.