The Adventures Of Prince Achmed (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #22 extract: The Adventures Of Prince Achmed (1926)

The Adventures Of Prince Achmed is a wondrous fantasy adventure that amalgamates many different strains of One Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights) into an hour long piece of cut-out animation, making it the oldest surviving feature-length animated film. (Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs would be the first cell animated feature film in case you're wondering). 

The aesthetics are what make this film so brilliant; the use of the figurines and colour tinting brings a simple, yet magical, quality to this fantastical story - one which felt very familiar thanks to some iconic sequences that can be found in a plethora of other fantasy films. And a note must be made on the cinematic nature of this film. Despite being 2-dimensional, this never feels constrained and flat, instead bursting with energy and life. For this and so much more, The Adventures Of Prince Achmed is certainly worth the watch.