Forgotten Women of Genre: Lotte Reiniger

March is Women's History Month. And while here on SYFY FANGRRLS we celebrate women's achievements throughout the year, we're going above and beyond for the upcoming month with a limited podcast series called Forgotten Women of Genre.

In 1937 with the release of Snow White, Disney became an international success story, patenting his famous multiplane camera and reinventing animation into a viable format for a feature-length film. Oh, wait, someone already did all of that except for the patenting part, and her name was Lotte Reiniger.

A young girl in Germany around the turn of the century, Reiniger became a master animator with her husband Carl Koch, and their small team created the first feature-length animated film to have survived through the years, The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Based on stories from 1001 Arabian Nights, this movie might not hold up great by today's standards, but the animation style is still quite breathtaking. Also, Reiniger and Koch fled the Nazi occupation of their home country for nearly a decade before being forced to return at the very end of the Third Reich. What we're saying is, it is one heck of a story.

Science fiction, fantasy, and all associated genres have finally evolved from a niche interest into a mainstream staple. But the women who have been instrumental in creating and shaping the nerdverse have largely gone unrecognized. Until today. Forgotten Women of Genre tells the stories of the women who helped some of the most famous fantasy worlds become a reality.

New episodes of this series will be released each day in the month of March, in addition to regularly scheduled episodes of STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS.

Subscribe to STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS and get these amazing stories in your feed all month.