The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Please note:
(a) there is an associated soundtrack to this panorama, please turn on the sound on your computer
(b) this was shot during a screening on a cinematheque, thus it's viewed best in a dim light

During the screening of The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Kiya Tabassian (setar) and Damian Nisenson (sax, flutes, percussion) perform a unique improvisation creating a soundtrack for the silent film at La Casa Obscura.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a 1926 feature-length animated film by the German animator Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film and no original German nitrate prints of the film are known to still exist. Working from surviving nitrate prints, German and British archivists have restored the film including reinstoring the original tinted backgrounds of delicate pastels. The film features a silhouette animation technique Reiniger invented which involved manipulated cutouts made from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera. 96,000 frame-by-frame stills - from a total of 250,000 made by her during the years 1923-1926 - were used.

The story is based on the elements taken from the collection 1,001 Arabian Nights, specifically The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou, that with the assistance of Aladdin, the Witch of the Fiery Mountain, and a magic horse, battles the evil African sorcerer to win the hand of Princess Peri Banu.

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The original plan for the night was to play as a trio with Kiya's brother, Ziya Tabassian, but on that day a storm hit Québec and he got his car stuck in the snow at Saint-Sauveur.

Self-defined as an Artist collective, La Casa Obscura is an alternative space in Montréal promoting the visual-arts, music and cinema.

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USA-Canada / Canada-Quebec

Lat: 45° 31' 55.42" N
Long: 74° 35' 21.95" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Hardware: Nikon D200; Nikkor 10.5mm f/2.8 and Nodal Ninja 3.

Software: PTGui 7.2; Photoshop CS3 and Pano2QTVR 1.6.6 Pro.

Sound: Recorded with a Zoom H2.