Perhaps the earliest feature-length animation, Lotte Reiniger’s enchanting silhouette film remains one of the most sublime works of animation. Rather than working with drawings or puppets, Reiniger cut figures out of cardboard and thin sheets of lead, lit them from behind between layers of elaborate landscapes to achieve a captivating realm both delicate and dense, exotic and familiar, populated by mysterious creatures who move with ballet-like expressivity. Based on a few tales from One Thousand and One Nights, Prince Achmed follows the prince and his flying horse as they soar headlong into a series of mythic adventures. While the film is remarkably progressive with its homoerotic moments, female rescuer and critique of women’s subjugation, it is also guilty of Orientalism in its stereotypical characterizations and a cultural composite that mixes various Asian and Middle Eastern culture’s costumes and ornamentation. Many of the latter transgressions can be attributed to her construction of a dreamy, exotic neverland that wavers in and out of familiar reality. Screening on a unique, restored and hand-tinted 35mm print.