Die Aben­teuer des Prinzen Achmed, or The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed, lays fair claim to being the ear­li­est ani­mat­ed fea­ture film in exis­tence. If we do grant it that title, it beats the next con­tender by more than a decade. While Prince Achmed came out a cen­tu­ry ago, in 1926, Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs, whose pro­duc­tion was presided over by a cer­tain Walt Dis­ney, did­n’t reach the­aters until 1937. The lat­ter pic­ture holds great dis­tinc­tion in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, of course, not least that of being the first fea­ture made with cel ani­ma­tion: the dom­i­nant tech­nique through­out most of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and one whose dig­i­tal replace­ment has been lament­ed by clas­sic ani­ma­tion enthu­si­asts. But the quiv­er­ing sil­hou­ettes of Prince Achmed show an alter­na­tive. The mak­ing of Snow White was, by the stan­dards of the day, a vast under­tak­ing, requir­ing Dis­ney to mar­shal artis­tic and indus­tri­al resources at a scale then unknown in ani­ma­tion. Prince Achmed, by con­trast, owes its exis­tence most­ly to the work of one woman: Lotte Reiniger, who first learned the craft of scheren­schnitte sil­hou­ette-mak­ing as a …