Prince Achmed

[jinian]

Wim and I went to see The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the world's first animated feature (1926), last night. Silent Movie Mondays at the Paramount include the Mighty Wurlitzer, a fabulous organ on which the soundtrack is played, and a good introduction to the movie beforehand. We found out that Lotte Reiniger did a lot more movies than we'd thought in the great silhouette animation style, and that she was a veritable Edward Scissorhands when making the paper cutouts. I hope we can track down some of her other stuff, too. Prince Achmed is lovely and ridiculous, not as racist or antifeminist as I expected, and really worth seeing for the technique alone.

Also, Cookie Monster teaches proper cookie-eating (video).