Lotte Reiniger and the hid­den women of animation

The his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion is check­ered and com­plex, but the first name to come up is usu­al­ly Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios – Mick­ey Mouse’s cre­ator is more often than not her­ald­ed as the lead­ing fig­ure of the art form. One of the most well-known out­ings for the mouse over­lord is Steam­boat Willie which, in 1928, was one of the first pieces of ani­ma­tion to be syn­chro­nised to music. As the stu­dio exper­i­ment­ed with dif­fer­ent sto­ries and char­ac­ters, they pro­duced Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs, their first ani­mat­ed fea­ture film. While it’s indis­putable that Disney’s films were land­mark achieve­ments, there was a film­mak­er who changed the game well before them.

Enter Lotte Reiniger, the cre­ator of the old­est sur­viv­ing fea­ture ani­ma­tion. As a child the Ger­man film­mak­er was obsessed with pup­pets. She made paper fig­ures of fairy tale char­ac­ters, and cut out fig­ures for hours to per­form plays for her par­ents. Born in Berlin in 1899, Reiniger was part of the first gen­er­a­tion to come of age with cin­e­ma, inspired by films like Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon. In her mid-20s, Reiniger set out to cre­ate her own movie. She chose to adapt the Mid­dle East­ern folk tale com­pi­la­tion One Thou­sand and One Nights, using stop-motion to bring her hand­made paper cut-outs to life.

The result was the fea­ture-length The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed, which was released in 1926. More than a cen­tu­ry lat­er the film still dances with vibran­cy and colour, lift­ing the fairy tale out of the books and on to the screen. It depicts the adven­tures of Prince Achmed as he nav­i­gates unex­pect­ed mag­i­cal crea­tures and mali­cious sor­cer­ers. The way Reiniger’s char­ac­ters move is entranc­ing yet dis­turb­ing, as they bend their bod­ies in super­hu­man ways and con­jure exag­ger­at­ed expres­sions from paper alone. Watch­ing the film often feels rem­i­nis­cent of an Esch­er paint­ing, with scenes twist effort­less­ly into opti­cal illu­sions. It is easy to for­get that it was cre­at­ed only with prac­ti­cal effects. Reiniger was inspired by Chi­nese shad­ow pup­petry, using sim­ple blocks of colour to tell a sto­ry through more abstract imagery than tra­di­tion­al 2D ani­ma­tion. Instead of manip­u­lat­ing the pup­pets to move, she used the tech­nique of stop-motion animation.

The process is famous­ly gru­el­ing even for film­mak­ers now (Guiller­mo Del Toro’s Pinoc­chio took two and a half years to com­plete) and, although Reiniger was not the first to use the tech­nique, she did pio­neer its use for longer projects.

The film was well received, much to the sur­prise of many of Reiniger’s fel­low ani­ma­tors. The art form had only been used for quick visu­al tricks, such as the short film Humor­ous Phas­es of Fun­ny Faces. It seems hard to imag­ine now, where ani­mat­ed films often run as long as live action (the recent Spi­der-Man: Across the Spi­der­verse Part One clocks in at 135 min­utes). Reiniger’s film also exper­i­ment­ed with ani­ma­tion tech­niques that made the indus­try evolve faster than ever. She cre­at­ed a pre­de­ces­sor to the mul­ti­plane cam­era, a tech­nique used to cre­ate a sense of depth. Dis­ney used a sim­i­lar method in Snow White 10 years lat­er, and is often cred­it­ed for its inven­tion. Even though her film did well, Reiniger’s suc­cess was slow­ly over­shad­owed by the larg­er Hol­ly­wood stu­dio. An indie female film­mak­er nev­er stood a chance against the Amer­i­can jug­ger­naut and their mouse mascot.

Even as ani­ma­tion reached wider audi­ences with Disney’s releas­es in the 1930s, women in the indus­try were still unable to reach the same posi­tions as men. They were usu­al­ly only allowed to work in the Ink­ing and Colour­ing depart­ment, which required pre­ci­sion and patience to paint every frame indi­vid­u­al­ly. If they tried to climb the career lad­der, they were met with a stern rejec­tion let­ter stat­ing: ​“Women do not do any of the cre­ative work in con­nec­tion with prepar­ing the car­toons on screen, as that work is per­formed entire­ly by young men.”

Over 100 women, known as ​‘colour girls’, worked on break­through ani­mat­ed films for the stu­dio includ­ing Snow White and Pinoc­chio. Next time you watch one of these films, take a clos­er look at the cred­its. You will see a small smat­ter­ing of women cred­it­ed for work­ing in pro­duc­tion, but that does not even scratch the sur­face of the amount of women who coloured in those beloved frames. It wasn’t until 1941, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of male ani­ma­tors being enlist­ed into the army was on the cards, that women were able to train as ani­ma­tors at Dis­ney Stu­dios. Final­ly, tal­ent­ed film­mak­ers such as Ret­ta Scott could show the world of ani­ma­tion what they were made of.

Reiniger died 41 years ago this month, and her lega­cy is only start­ing to be recog­nised. If she walked into an ani­ma­tion stu­dio today, things would look very dif­fer­ent, with female film­mak­ers , in the­o­ry at least, being giv­en the same oppor­tu­ni­ty as their male coun­ter­parts. Domee Shi became the first woman to sole­ly direct a Dis­ney fea­ture with Turn­ing Red in 2022, depict­ing dorky teenag­er Mei as she grap­ples with her new­found abil­i­ty to trans­form into a red pan­da. But out­side of Disney’s shad­ow, many female ani­ma­tors are get­ting to tell their own bizarre and beau­ti­ful sto­ries. Nora Twomey’s The Bread­win­ner and The Final Exit of the Dis­ci­ples of Ascen­sia by Jon­ni Phillips are just a few exam­ples of films start­ing to get female ani­ma­tors tak­en seriously.

But this slow and long over­due progress is not enough. Only one woman has won an Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture (Jen­nifer Lee for co-direct­ing Frozen), and duo Domee Shi and Becky Neiman-Cobb snatched a win for Best Ani­mat­ed Short with Bao in 2018. Main­stream stu­dios often fail to recog­nise the tal­ent of female ani­ma­tors and direc­tors, who are forced – like Reinger a cen­tu­ry ago – to instead find oppor­tu­ni­ties in indie film­mak­ing. Insta­gram and Youtube are rife with bril­liant female ani­ma­tors, free to explore themes away from the rules of main­stream ani­ma­tion, and demon­strate the breadth of tal­ent out there just wait­ing for a wider plat­form. To name a few, stop-motion ani­ma­tor Andrea Love uses social media to share short films of minia­ture cot­ton kitchens. Alex­is Sug­den embroi­ders her adorable char­ac­ters frame by frame, as well as work­ing as an ani­ma­tor for major TV series like Disney’s Mon­sters at Work. These women deserve the oppor­tu­ni­ties to show their work to the world that men have been afford­ed since the dawn of the art form.