Berthold Bartosch was a film-maker, born in Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

 (now the Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

).

He moved to Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 in 1920 and collaborated with Lotte Reiniger

Lotte Reiniger

Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger was a German silhouette animator and film director.- Early life :Lotte Reiniger was born in Berlin-Charlottenburg, German Empire, on June 2, 1899...

 on her paper silhouette

Silhouette

A silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene consisting of the outline and a basically featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black. Although the art form has been popular since the mid-18th century, the term “silhouette” was seldom used until the early decades...

 animations:

• The Ornament of the Loving Heart
• The Battle of Skagerrak
• The Adventures of Prince Achmed
  The Adventures of Prince Achmed
  The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a 1926 German animated fairytale film by Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film; two earlier ones were made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani, but they are considered lost...
  
  
• Dr Dolittle

In 1930 Bartosch moved to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 and created the 30 minute film entitled "The Idea" to which he is most remembered for. It is described as the first serious, poetic, tragic work in animation. The film's characters and backdrops were composed of several layers of different types of paper

Paper

Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....

 from semi-transparent to thick cardboard

Paperboard

Paperboard is a thick paper based material. While there is no rigid differentiation between paper and paperboard, paperboard is generally thicker than paper. According to ISO standards, paperboard is a paper with a basis weight above 224 g/m2, but there are exceptions. Paperboard can be single...

. Special effects like halos, smoke and fog were made with lather

Lather

Lather may refer to:*Foam, a substance formed by gas bubbles trapped in a liquid or solid*Läther , a Frank Zappa album*Lather , a song by Jefferson Airplane*Lather, a worker who installs the strips used in lath and plaster wall construction...

 spread on glass plates and lit from behind. The film was based on a book of woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

s from Frans Masereel

Frans Masereel

Frans Masereel was a Flemish painter and graphic artist who worked mainly in France. He is known especially for his woodcuts. His greatest work is generally said to be the wordless graphic novel Mon Livre d'Heures . He completed over 20 other wordless novels in his career...

, The idea. "The Idea" featured a score by composer Arthur Honegger

Arthur Honegger

Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...

, including an ondes Martenot

Ondes Martenot

The ondes Martenot , also known as the ondium Martenot, Martenot and ondes musicales, is an early electronic musical instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot. The original design was similar in sound to the theremin...

, which is believed to be the very first use of an electronic instrument in film history.

From 1935 to 1939, Bartosch worked on an anti-war film, "St. Francis" or "Nightmare and Dreams." When the Nazis invaded Paris, he deposited the film at the Cinémathèque Française

Cinémathèque Française

The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...

. The film was destroyed during the Nazi occupation, and only a few still images exist.

In 1948, he spent a year working for UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

 in Paris mentoring George Dunning

George Dunning

George Garnett Dunning was a Canadian film maker and animator. He is best known for animating and directing the 1968 Beatles' film Yellow Submarine.-Biography:...

, a London-born animator known for his involvement with the Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

's 1968 animated feature, Yellow Submarine.