Lotte Reiniger’s Adventures of Prince Achmed turns one hundred this year, and I was grateful to introduce this astonishing film at a special screening at VIFF (03-01-26). Musicians Gordon Grdina and Hamin Honari provided live musical accompaniment to a packed theatre. Honari, an Iranian percussionist now based in Montreal, spoke with feeling about the role of art in sustaining a common human spirit and imagination against the violence of war.

In my introduction I mentioned that the original negatives of Adventures of Prince Achmed were lost in the bombing of Berlin during the Second World War. A surviving exhibition print was located in London by Louis Hagen Jr., whose father (Louis Hagen Sr.) commissioned and financed this film in Germany. As a child, Louis Jr. watched the making of Prince Achmed in a studio built over his father’s garage, and decades later he helped Reiniger found a new animation studio in England to ensure her art would persist.

  • Lotte Reiniger and two collaborators at work on the film
  • Two still images from the film
  • Page from article about Lotte Reiniger’s process