Papageno

First of all I must disappoint everyone who thought that Walt Disney made the first long animated movie. Long before him there were people who made animated masterpieces. The first was Windsor McKay, the man who brought us "Gertie the Dinosaur" and another important person was a woman from Germany. Her name was Lotte Reiniger. She is the inventor of the so called silhouette film and she has made with "The Adventures of Prince Ahmed" (1926) the first full length animated movie of the film history. Papageno is a 10 minute example of her extraordinary film art. It based on the "Magic Flute" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Nothing against computer animation but the handmade silhouettes have more live than all computer animated figures of the modern cinema together. Watch the films of Lotte Reiniger and you will agree.