Lotte Reiniger

German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation, who made more than 40 films over her career, all using her invention. Her best known films are The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) – the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, preceding Walt Disney's feature-length Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) by more than ten years – and Papageno (1935), featuring music by Mozart. Reiniger is also noted for devising a predecessor to the first multiplane camera.

As a child, she was fascinated with the Chinese art of silhouette puppetry, even building her own puppet theatre, so that she could put on shows for her family and friends. As a teenager, Reiniger fell in love with cinema, first with the films of Georges Méliès for their special effects, then the films of the actor and director Paul Wegener, known today for The Golem (1920).

Reiniger eventually convinced her parents to allow her to enroll in the acting group to which Wegener belonged, the Theatre of Max Reinhardt. She began by making costumes and props and working backstage. She started making silhouette portraits of the various actors around her, and soon she was making elaborate title cards for Wegener's films, many of which featured her silhouettes.

In 1918, Reiniger animated wooden rats and created the animated intertitles for Wegener's Der Rattenfänger von Hameln (The Pied Piper of Hamelin). The first film Reiniger directed was Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens (The Ornament of the Enamoured Heart, 1919), a short piece involving two lovers and an ornament that reflects their moods. She made six short films during the following few years, all produced and photographed by her husband, including the fairy tale animation Aschenputtel (1922).

During this period she became the centre of a large group of ambitious German animators, including Bartosch, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann and Oskar Fischinger.