Animagika

Paper Cinema

Lotte Reiniger, Cinderella

I had a gobsmacking evening of Animagika at the Branchage Film Festival last month, watching a Paper Cinema performance and a Lotte Reiniger screening of Cinderella accompanied by Amiina.

Paper Cinema is illustrated and performed by Nic Rawling. He makes hundreds of beautiful pen and ink drawings, drawings of pirates, drunks, children on bicycles chasing trains, girls transforming into birds. These are cut out and stuck onto cornflake packets with lollypop stick handles. Nic works with another puppeteer, together they work through the pile of illustrations, wiggling them about and shooting them backwards and forwards in front of a camera that projects onto a big screen. At the Animagika night the film was projected onto a huge screen on the Opera House stage and an amazing musician sat with them improvising music to the story as it played out onto the screen.

It was truly entrancing to watch the story unfold and to be able to see the puppeteers working at the same time. The handmade, hand manipulated drawings reminded me of the early television animation of my childhood, Bod and Mr Benn.

Watch Paper Cinema and Kora present King Pest here.

Watch Bod here.

Watch Mr Benn here.

Lotte Reiniger made her animation of Cinderella in 1922, she was a pioneer of twentieth century animation and made the first ever full length animated film.

She worked in black and white silhouette cutout animation inspired by Eastern European traditions of shadow puppetry. The version of Cinderella that I saw was truly gruesome, the point at which the ugly sisters hacked off their toes and heels to fit the glass slipper on their feet was stomach churning. How wonderfully clever to cause such a physical reaction with simple silhouettes.

The original film is silent, at Animagika it was accompanied by Amiina, the percussion section of Sigor Ros. They played a selection of wonderful instruments such as musical saws and wine glasses. It was a perfect marriage of sound and image.

Watch Lotte Reininger’s Cinderella here.

Hear Amiina here.

Joanna.

PS. Join Branchage on Facebook, make sure that you don’t miss out next year.