These are the words of Lotte Reiniger, who in 1926 completed The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the earliest existing full-length animated feature film. To create this work, she emulated the technique of shadow-puppetry and silhouette, using paper cut-outs to create remarkably detailed figures and sceneries. She pioneered a new form of storytelling, animated film, utilizing an art form that goes back thousands of years.
Shadow puppetry originated in China during the Han dynasty, shortly before the start of the Common Era. Emperor Wu of Han had his court officers "bring to life" one of his recently deceased concubines. They cut a figure out of donkey leather, with 11 articulated joints and painted clothes, and then cast the figure's shadow against a screen using an oil lamp. The form quickly grew in popularity throughout Asia and spread westwards with the conquering Mongols, all the way to to Turkey.
In 1767 French missionaries in China returned to present the art form in Paris, where it quickly gained popularity. Ombres chinoise (Chinese shadows), became Ombres françaises, and shadow plays became a popular 19th-century past-time, especially in nightclubs in and around Montmartre, particularly the famous Chat-Noir.
The films of Lotte Reiniger evoke these old European shadow plays, with figures reminiscent of the popular silhouette portraiture of pre-photography days. However, instead of direct manipulation of shadow puppets, she did stop-frame animation, slightly altering the position of the figure in each consecutive frame. Here is one of her later films Jack and the Beanstalk (1955):
Silhouette and Shadow has been used in countless forms of film-making and design (for example Apple's iPod ads) , however only a handful of examples do seem to be quite explicitly influenced by the aesthetic of Lotte Reiniger's work and the Shadow Puppetry art form.
A recent example is The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello, directed by Anthony Lucas. Below is the trailer for the film.
The film does an amazing job of placing two-dimensional figures into rich, three-dimensional spaces, and the atmospheric colors are reminiscent of the colored plates Reiniger used for different scenes in Prince Achmed. Just as Reiniger's film was relevant in the sense that it looked to an ancient form of storytelling to pioneer a new form of media, Jasper Morello looks to an old form of two-dimensional world creation, and challenges our accepted notions of space in the age of 3D animation.
Below is a short film by Anthony Lucas, utilizing similar techniques:
Below are several interesting links with further information:
Lotte Reiniger Bio and Filmography
Flash Presentation on Shadow Puppetry
Karagoz.net: Information on Turkish Shadow Puppetry
Jasper Morello: Official Site
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