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★★★★★ Long considered cinema's oldest surviving feature-length animation, Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) is finally released this week on a widely available format - something that, until recently, had been an impossible feat. Procurable, as is now customary with BFI home entertainment, in a Dual Format edition accompanied by a specially recorded narration (by actress Penelope McGhie) and Wolfgang Zeller's original score, Reiniger's enthralling, pioneering debut feature is thankfully being given the treatment it deserves by an institution fully aware of its forgotten cinematic status.

Painstakingly produced between 1923 to 1926, the film's original negative was destroyed in 1945 and thought to be lost forever until a nitrate copy was found in the BFI's archive and restored to its former glory. Now, for the first time viewers are able to experience Reiniger's innovative and influential craft in a rudimentary silhouette animation (which she herself called "shadows films") that boasts an intrinsically lifelike,...