100 years old, yet its copyright only expired five years ago—in the United States. In Europe and other life+70 regions, the film will remain copyrighted past 2050, even though Lotte Reiniger died nearly half a century ago!
The problem is that copyright is supposed to secure for the authors the benefits of a creative work for a limited time. If it's decades longer than the longest human lifespan, that's not "a limited time" in any sense that is meaningful to humans.
Copyright is now a global thing harmonized by treaties, and the view you describe is the one from the American Constitution, but other countries (even if they compromised on a certain length in treaties) aren't necessarily coming out of the same legal tradition.
Yes, but I'm not aware of any jurisdiction with an appetite for perpetual copyright in general. At least, not in the Western sense of copyright being a nearly unlimited, and property-like (transferable, subdividable, and assignable) legal right to refuse access to a work for any reason.
The actual divide between American and European legal traditions has to do with moral rights and copyright formalities. In Europe, you could very easily take a work from one country, translate it, and not only publish it in another, but get copyright title to it in that country as well. And publishers did this heaps. Europe's solution was to get rid of copyright formalities - works are just born copyrighted. America hated this and spent about a hundred years digging their heels in about it until they begrudgingly signed onto the Berne Convention without really agreeing to it.
While a primary goal of Berne was to make copyright work for artists again[4], a secondary goal was to protect the publishing empires that had been built up in each country. Both sides of this tradition wanted copyright terms that were long enough to protect their publishing empires but not so long as to require them to pay royalties to the folklore and song those empires plundered on the way up. You can see this in how easily America was willing to go along with life+70 when the EU offered it to them, while they still drag their feet on automatic registration and moral rights.
There are a handful of countries that have a "paying public domain" - as in, anything in the public domain must still be paid for, but the legal "owners"[0] of the work do not have the right to refuse that payment. That sort of arrangement is perpetual, but because it lacks the right to refuse access, it's not copyright in any way Hollywood would recognize it. It's more helpful to think of these in the same way one thinks of Canadian Content (CanCon) laws: a way for countries that are not net cultural exporters[3] to siphon off the top of the creative industries of countries that are.
I can also think of a few cases in which specific works were locked behind very narrow sui generis IP[2] rights. Like, only one particular children's hospital in the UK is allowed to perform Peter Pan on stage. Or, you're not allowed to sell merchandise with the Mona Lisa on it in Italy[1]. These are copyright-adjacent, in that they're government-granted monopolies over creative works. And they're perpetual. But they don't transfer like copyright and they don't cover all the same acts that copyright does.
So, yes, the "limited Times" framing is very American, but no other jurisdiction has meaningfully objected to it, either. We joke about digging up the grave of Shakespeare every time talk of copyright extensions happens, but if you do extend out copyright forever, then every person in the world has fractional blood inheritance to a very large amount of human culture. Going back to that "paying public domain" thing, some people have even floated the idea of collective ownership over indigenous cultural works. Like, imagine if when Disney made the movie Moana, they had to pay literally every Polynesian person a royalty check. Nobody in power wants something like that to happen, because that's not building up an empire. That's tearing it down, brick by brick, royalty check by royalty check.
[0] The notion of who gets the money from a paying public domain varies; but is usually some government collection agency.
[1] Italy actually used to have a paying public domain, but replaced it with this law.
[2] In the Doctorowian sense of "intellectual property is the right to dictate the conduct of your competitors".
[3] To be clear, creative industry is so broadly globalized that it renders this concept outdated. e.g. Canada has shittons of cultural exports, they're just all on YouTube.
Part of the problem is that it wasn't possible to upload it to YouTube until recently (and someone from Germany could still demand for it to be taken down or made unavailable in Germany), while also, being almost 100 years old, it was not released commercially - which both conspired to condemn it to obscurity.
They are jointed paper-cut figures (cut and then fastened with split pins and thread I think), laid out on multiple stacks of glass and ground-glass to simulate depth, and then back-illuminated (just as shadow puppets would be).
It's frame by frame stop-motion capture, for sure.
To be clear: they are not shadow puppets at all, they are not being displayed in the traditional way, but they are being captured with a camera.
In many scenes characters entirely change their shape in a natural or fluid way, because the cut-outs are being wholly replaced with different cut-outs from frame to frame, to simulate a natural/fluid motion. This is one of many techniques used in the film possible with stop-motion animation and impossible with shadowpuppets.
I watched the film and was quite impressed with the animation techniques used, although this isn't really novel but not because of puppets, animation actually goes back much further than film. It's a beautiful film though, and I can see why people preserved it.
Indeed, but there are evidently some jointed/ligatured/pinned figures because there are some jointed movements. Stop-frame, obviously.
In some scenes parts of a figure simply do not move or change shape at all while other parts of the limbs do, and the limbs move in angular rotations before being swapped out for recut or different limbs. In the absence of machine cutting, the only explanation is that the figures are composed of pieces.
I am quite sure some jointing and "composition" of figures was used — not just for efficiency but for quality frame to frame.
It is absolutely amazing art but the level of craft is of the scale!
Just from the level of consistency even if you assume that film frames have been carefully realigned in digitisation.
No, they are not traditional shadow puppets. According to the wiki you linked, "Reiniger pioneered silhouette animation" where "shadow-play-like puppets are filmed frame-by-frame"
They are similar in visual style but different in form and method.
> In the 1910s, the German animator Lotte Reiniger pioneered silhouette animation as a format, whereby shadow-play-like puppets are filmed frame-by-frame.
Animators (and storyboarders, layout artists, illustrators etc) are still taught to prioritise the clarity and readability of the character's silhouette, although they're usually working with a three quarter view (between side profile and front-on) rather than a profile like the shadow puppets here. Still I can't help thinking this film would be a good object of study.
Some of the forest scenes remind me of the original King Kong in their use of dark foreground shapes and framing devices to give an impression of scale.
Animation isn't just hand-drawn animation, it's any kind of movie composed from individual still images. And stop-motion animation is a subcategory of that, no matter if you use clay/putty (like in Wallace & Gromit), Lego figures or paper cutouts (like in this case or also on South Park).
100 years old, yet its copyright only expired five years ago—in the United States. In Europe and other life+70 regions, the film will remain copyrighted past 2050, even though Lotte Reiniger died nearly half a century ago!
What's the problem, here?
The problem is that copyright is supposed to secure for the authors the benefits of a creative work for a limited time. If it's decades longer than the longest human lifespan, that's not "a limited time" in any sense that is meaningful to humans.
Copyright is now a global thing harmonized by treaties, and the view you describe is the one from the American Constitution, but other countries (even if they compromised on a certain length in treaties) aren't necessarily coming out of the same legal tradition.
That's fine, but all that means is that America should change and the others can stay the same if they want :)
Yes, but I'm not aware of any jurisdiction with an appetite for perpetual copyright in general. At least, not in the Western sense of copyright being a nearly unlimited, and property-like (transferable, subdividable, and assignable) legal right to refuse access to a work for any reason.
The actual divide between American and European legal traditions has to do with moral rights and copyright formalities. In Europe, you could very easily take a work from one country, translate it, and not only publish it in another, but get copyright title to it in that country as well. And publishers did this heaps. Europe's solution was to get rid of copyright formalities - works are just born copyrighted. America hated this and spent about a hundred years digging their heels in about it until they begrudgingly signed onto the Berne Convention without really agreeing to it.
While a primary goal of Berne was to make copyright work for artists again[4], a secondary goal was to protect the publishing empires that had been built up in each country. Both sides of this tradition wanted copyright terms that were long enough to protect their publishing empires but not so long as to require them to pay royalties to the folklore and song those empires plundered on the way up. You can see this in how easily America was willing to go along with life+70 when the EU offered it to them, while they still drag their feet on automatic registration and moral rights.
There are a handful of countries that have a "paying public domain" - as in, anything in the public domain must still be paid for, but the legal "owners"[0] of the work do not have the right to refuse that payment. That sort of arrangement is perpetual, but because it lacks the right to refuse access, it's not copyright in any way Hollywood would recognize it. It's more helpful to think of these in the same way one thinks of Canadian Content (CanCon) laws: a way for countries that are not net cultural exporters[3] to siphon off the top of the creative industries of countries that are.
I can also think of a few cases in which specific works were locked behind very narrow sui generis IP[2] rights. Like, only one particular children's hospital in the UK is allowed to perform Peter Pan on stage. Or, you're not allowed to sell merchandise with the Mona Lisa on it in Italy[1]. These are copyright-adjacent, in that they're government-granted monopolies over creative works. And they're perpetual. But they don't transfer like copyright and they don't cover all the same acts that copyright does.
So, yes, the "limited Times" framing is very American, but no other jurisdiction has meaningfully objected to it, either. We joke about digging up the grave of Shakespeare every time talk of copyright extensions happens, but if you do extend out copyright forever, then every person in the world has fractional blood inheritance to a very large amount of human culture. Going back to that "paying public domain" thing, some people have even floated the idea of collective ownership over indigenous cultural works. Like, imagine if when Disney made the movie Moana, they had to pay literally every Polynesian person a royalty check. Nobody in power wants something like that to happen, because that's not building up an empire. That's tearing it down, brick by brick, royalty check by royalty check.
[0] The notion of who gets the money from a paying public domain varies; but is usually some government collection agency.
[1] Italy actually used to have a paying public domain, but replaced it with this law.
[2] In the Doctorowian sense of "intellectual property is the right to dictate the conduct of your competitors".
[3] To be clear, creative industry is so broadly globalized that it renders this concept outdated. e.g. Canada has shittons of cultural exports, they're just all on YouTube.
[4] Lol.
Part of the problem is that it wasn't possible to upload it to YouTube until recently (and someone from Germany could still demand for it to be taken down or made unavailable in Germany), while also, being almost 100 years old, it was not released commercially - which both conspired to condemn it to obscurity.
Says the guy using a registered trademark as his username.
Amazing film. (I discovered it via "1001 Movies to See Before You Die.")
Copies are on YT:
https://youtu.be/7V_8aFQUfBw
https://youtu.be/AbXjEoD_dIE
https://youtu.be/j6DaB0Is4jM
It can also be watched in full on Wikipedia, as is the case with many films that are public domain in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Prince_Achme...
Remarkable visuals. Could be an indie computer game.
I am not a gamer but there is an indie game I wanted to try — is it called First Light? — that is essentially a shadow puppet realm.
There's a game I did try that used silhouette visuals that are IMO very Reininger-inspired — Limbo.
For those interested in the subject, animation has quite a history before Disney came onto the scene. I suggest this book:
Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928 by Donald Crafton
Personally, I remain impressed to this day with the pioneering work of Winsor McCay, the cartoonist who created Little Nemo. Perhaps the best example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW71mSedJuU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-TJvNBO1fw
17 min documentary showing Reiniger's technique/process
I’m shocked I never heard of this before.
Just watched the first couple minutes of The Adventures of Prince Achmed and it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.
> it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before
It's a filmed shadowpuppet performance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_play
This is not true, it's a stop-motion animation.
Of what?
They are jointed paper-cut figures (cut and then fastened with split pins and thread I think), laid out on multiple stacks of glass and ground-glass to simulate depth, and then back-illuminated (just as shadow puppets would be).
It's frame by frame stop-motion capture, for sure.
So just to be clear about it: they are traditional shadow puppets, displayed in the traditional manner, but for a camera?
To be clear: they are not shadow puppets at all, they are not being displayed in the traditional way, but they are being captured with a camera.
In many scenes characters entirely change their shape in a natural or fluid way, because the cut-outs are being wholly replaced with different cut-outs from frame to frame, to simulate a natural/fluid motion. This is one of many techniques used in the film possible with stop-motion animation and impossible with shadowpuppets.
I watched the film and was quite impressed with the animation techniques used, although this isn't really novel but not because of puppets, animation actually goes back much further than film. It's a beautiful film though, and I can see why people preserved it.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2...
Indeed, but there are evidently some jointed/ligatured/pinned figures because there are some jointed movements. Stop-frame, obviously.
In some scenes parts of a figure simply do not move or change shape at all while other parts of the limbs do, and the limbs move in angular rotations before being swapped out for recut or different limbs. In the absence of machine cutting, the only explanation is that the figures are composed of pieces.
I am quite sure some jointing and "composition" of figures was used — not just for efficiency but for quality frame to frame.
It is absolutely amazing art but the level of craft is of the scale!
Just from the level of consistency even if you assume that film frames have been carefully realigned in digitisation.
No, they are not traditional shadow puppets. According to the wiki you linked, "Reiniger pioneered silhouette animation" where "shadow-play-like puppets are filmed frame-by-frame"
They are similar in visual style but different in form and method.
> In the 1910s, the German animator Lotte Reiniger pioneered silhouette animation as a format, whereby shadow-play-like puppets are filmed frame-by-frame.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_play#Shadow_puppetry_to...
Looks like stop motion Scherenschnitte.
I first encountered it set to Radiohead's "Sail to the Moon," which pairs quite well with the eerie visuals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq-ggx0TlkA
There's app that allows you to do something quite similar in real time:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quikanimate/id6467067883
Animators (and storyboarders, layout artists, illustrators etc) are still taught to prioritise the clarity and readability of the character's silhouette, although they're usually working with a three quarter view (between side profile and front-on) rather than a profile like the shadow puppets here. Still I can't help thinking this film would be a good object of study.
Some of the forest scenes remind me of the original King Kong in their use of dark foreground shapes and framing devices to give an impression of scale.
https://youtu.be/j6DaB0Is4jM?t=1720
https://youtu.be/1vNv-pE8I_c?t=72
Starevich was doing stop motion animated films in 1912: "The Beautiful Leukanida" or "The Cameraman's Revenge".
The key part being "feature film". There's tons of animated short films from the 1910s.
I wonder if she knew of Henri Rivière and his "Ombres Chinoises."
https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/henri-riviere-master-printm...
The Shadow Theatre at "Le Chat Noir" was fairly famous, no?
IIRC, that's the movie they play on loop at the kids section of Landesmuseum in Zürich.
It's The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). IMDB page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015532/
Never heard about it before and just watched it on youtube. I have found it absolutely beautiful.
Amazing story!
I was unaware of her.
Thanks!
[dead]
Looking at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V_8aFQUfBw, the film is impressive and has merit.
Should we say that it's "animated?" I know it's an argument of semantics; yet it's nothing like the hand-drawn animation of early Disney movies.
Animation isn't just hand-drawn animation, it's any kind of movie composed from individual still images. And stop-motion animation is a subcategory of that, no matter if you use clay/putty (like in Wallace & Gromit), Lego figures or paper cutouts (like in this case or also on South Park).