Segunda adaptación de este cuento realizada por Lotte Reiniger, tras la de 1954, esta vez en color.

Adaptación del cuento de los hermanos Grimm.

Silhouette film based on Perrault's fairy tale.

On his way inland, Dr. Dolittle and his animals encounter a nasty surprise. Natives capture them and hold them under lock and key.

A king and queen celebrate their daughter’s birth, but a forgotten fairy curses her to die by pricking her finger on a spindle. Another fairy softens the curse, allowing her to sleep for a hundred years. Despite efforts to remove all spindles, the princess pricks her finger and falls asleep, along with the entire castle.

Silhouette fairy tale film about a man who wins his true love with the help of the "wee folk".

Pioneer of silhouette animation, Lotte Reiniger, uses this technique in a retelling of the Greek legend in which the sculptor, Pygmalion, brings a statue to life.

A love story set to a baroque score, HARLEQUIN is a delicate black-and-white ballet rendered through exquisitely detailed silhouettes.

Because Dummling has a good heart, fate leads him to a princess waiting for rescue.

Lotte Reiniger's earliest preserved fairytale film based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.

The original nativity story animated silent film by Lotte Reiniger.

The animation begins with the first movement of Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The first shot opens with a clown, soon to join a revelling troup of 'Viennese' partygoers that are gathering in a nearby building for a soirée. Following them is a young man who tries to steal the affections of a maid from her 'fiancée' before she enters. The next scene is indoors for the dance, accompanied by the third movement of Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The young man spies the young girl, alone and unhappy surrounded by the gaiety, through the glass. He acquires the costume of a passing pleasure seeker, and joins the affair. The girl has now moved to the garden; the young man, still in disguise, presents himself to her, accompanied by the second movement of Eine kleine Nachtmusik. He begins to speak to her, while kneeling, to the duet 'Il core vi dono' ('I give you my heart') from Così Fan Tutte. At the conclusion of the duet his identity is brought to light and the two entwine. At last, they return to the dance, accompanied by a minuet (Divertimento in D, K.334).

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A wicked giant attempts to steal all of the instruments from a small town.

Short directed by Lotte Reiniger.

Silhouette film advertising the Post Office Greetings Telegram service.

For those unaware of Reiniger or her prolific output, it should be immediately noted that not only was she a distinctive filmmaker but also a pioneering one. The earliest short on this collection, a version of Cinderella from 1922, describes itself as being “told by a pair of scissors on a screen” and this is exactly how she worked. Reiniger’s films were all made in a singular silhouette style: intricately designed figures delicately animated against simple backgrounds to retell popular and much-loved stories, predominantly fairy tales as this collection suggests. As well as Cinderella we also find Thumbelina, Puss in Boots, Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk and so on, the tales of Brothers Grimm intermingling with the tales from the One Thousand and One Nights. Yet interestingly her technique and style came effectively fully-formed. New technologies would see her films move from silent to sound and from black and white to occasional colour, yet the basic ingredients never once change. Compare the 1922 Cinderella with the 1954 version also included on this set and you’ll see how much the two resemble each other in their briskness of pace, their fundamental character designs and their overall charm – only the fact that the latter was made for US television suggests why some of the more grotesque elements have been toned down. (As a complete contrast note the extreme differences between the two versions of Cinderella found on Disney’s now deleted two-disc special edition, the first also made in 1922, the latter being the 1949 feature; other than the source and the Disney name on both there really is only the bare minimum to connect the two.)