Lakeside Arts hosts this intriguing and inspiring play about Lotte Reiniger...

The award -winning international theatre company Akimbo Theatre were lighting up the stage at the Lakeside Theatre this week. You may have seen the Left Lion preview in February and they did not disappoint! The performance opened with a statement and question: “In 1939 Walt Disney released the first feature length animation. Or did he?”
Lotte Reiniger was a German artist in 1920s Berlin, a city full of life, music, art and innovation. Lotte found she had a unique talent in quickly cutting intricate and elaborate silhouettes for film. She wanted to access the technology to hone these skills and dreamt of making a full-length feature film. This would be quite a feat considering a 60 second animated advertisement could take weeks.
Lotte found ‘her people’, the camera she needed and funding. She and her team estimated it would take three years to make a full- length feature with the story board planning, cutting and the incredibly time- consuming tasks of photographing each minute movement to create a seamless animation. At the time the government sensors had a finger in every pie so Lotte suggested 1001 Arabian Nights as a suitable but also exciting topic. Moving to a new studio in Potsdam they began. The film was made (and censored in areas) to an amazed public and an international tour.
Did Walt Disney create the first feature length animation?
On their return after the tour, Germany was a much-changed place and the film was less well received by the authorities who at the time were burning books and films. Lotte and her team could only afford to make one precious copy which was eventually lost in the turmoil only for a copy to be found decades later. Lotte and her team continued to work but, like so many artists, were eventually drawn into the Nazi propaganda machine.
The cast of five, who also make up most of the crew brought to life the rise of Lotte Reiniger – also known as the Queen of Silhouettes. The cast performed non-stop for 90 minutes using a simple set, light and silhouettes and their bodies. Physicality is the company trade mark with all trained at Jaques Lecoq in Paris. Lexie Baker was a Lotte you immediately wanted to succeed and her fellow cast members were funny, kind, sinister and comical. Never a dull moment or dropped move.
What made her animation different, apart from the ambitious length, was the use of a new camera Lotte invented. The multiplane camera gave their animations that depth silhouette animations had been lacking. This brings us back to the initial question posed by Akimbo Theatre. Did Walt Disney create the first feature length animation? It would appear not! His studio also lays claim to inventing the multiplane camera. These are two reasons Akimbo Theatre felt Lotte Reiniger needed to be written back in to history and her achievements acknowledged. As is the case in an country in war and turmoil individual achievements are so often lost, forgotten or appropriated.
The Animator played at Lakeside Arts on Thursday February 27th 2025.
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