That Silhouette Girl : Trick Studio
The short documentary created by Trick Studio about Lotte Reiniger.
“I believe in the truth of fairy tales, more than I believe in the truth of the newspaper.” -Lotte Reiniger
As a young girl Lotte began her papercutting career, first starting with shadow puppets and a handmade theater created for a school Shakespeare performance. From that point on, she continued to create worlds with little more than a pair of scissors and paper. Soon, she became a well-known animated filmmaker her shadow-cutting technique. Her films are imbued with an unmatched grace and beauty due to her passion for an aesthetic that she developed so distinctly. Lotte once said that animation is “not so much a technical implement as the expression of the spirit behind it.”
A scene from The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
Lotte was particularly inspired by fairy tales and folklore.
Twelve years before Walt Disney created Snow White, Lotte made The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the oldest surviving feature length animation. It was a fantastical piece of animation…with flying horses and birds battling sorcerers. When the French film director Jean Renoir saw it in Paris, he wanted to tell her, “You have fairy hands.” While directing this film, she invented the multiplane camera, which gave her animation a depth and complexity that didn’t previously exist. She called her invention tricktisch or the trick table. Her process was incredibly complex cutting figures out of black cardboard and attaching the limbs with lead wires. Before filming, she would spend hours at the Berlin Zoo studying the way animals moved so that she could replicate their lifelike movement. She would then use her glass table and light invention to move her figures and make the wires disappear.
Lotte at work creating her intricate designs.
Lotte Reiniger then, Trick Studio now using the tricktisch.
Film directors, Carla Patullo and Elizabeth Beech are determined that Lotte’s story will not be forgotten again. Elizabeth said of Lotte’s films: “They are so beautiful and unique, yet they are oddly familiar. There’s a wonderful combination of playfulness and darkness in her work that drew us in and trapped us. Then we came across an interview with her that was so charming that we decided to make the film about her life.” So, in 2018, that is exactly what they did. Using music, magic, and a stirring narration by Lotte herself, this documentary tells the fairy tale story of an animation pioneer whose passion for her art was tragically thwarted when she was forced to leave Berlin in the early 1930s. This short film qualified for the Oscars, was shortlisted for an IDA Award, and was selected as one of the Hottest Shorts of Hot Docs.
Elizabeth and Carla have no intentions of stopping there…there is more of Lotte’s story to be told. They are currently working on Shadowmaker, a feature length animated documentary born out of their short film, Lotte That Silhouette Girl. Pushing the boundaries of traditional documentary, the imagery in Shadowmaker weaves together reality and fantasy; telling the true story of Lotte Reiniger with cinematic silhouette animation and a fantastical folklore spirit.
“Sidecar Puppetry Revue” March 21st, 2021 5:00 PST
We heard more from Trick Studio and saw their short film, at our virtual celebration of World Puppetry Day, the “Sidecar Puppetry Revue,” on March 21st at 5pm Pacific Time. We will also had a shadow puppet opera, a visit from the Atlanta Center for Puppetry (who houses most of Jim Henson’s art), live hosts in a vintage theater setting, a heartfelt stop motion film created with yarn puppets, scores of raffle prizes and more! It was such a wonderful event!