Louis Seel was working as a caricaturist in New York, when his eyes were opened to the potential of motion pictures in the early 1910s. After a stint with Bud Fisher (of Mutt and Jeff fame), Seel began producing animated trailers for cinemas and created the Screen Follies series in 1918. In 1920, he moved to Germany. For the Munich-based Möve-Film, then later for his own company, he produced the fortnightly Münchner Filmbilderbogen (later Louis Seel Filmbilderbogen) series, working in close collaboration with his wife, Olivette Thomas, who served as actress and model for the recurring character Pierette.

This film is a fine example of Seel’s saucy humour and his novel style, combining live-action and animation techniques, similar to Max Fleischer’s work in the US. When Pierette pours the contents of the artist’s pot of ink over herself at the end, the film seems to be spoofing Fleischer’s Out of the Inkwell series, which invariably ended with the animated clown Koko vanishing into the bottle.

Initially thought to date from 1924, the film was correctly identified in the final stages of festival preparations. We have decided to retain it in the programme anyway.

Oliver Hanley