Cristiani and the First Animated Feature Films in History - From Argentina to the World

Abstract

On December 21, 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Hand, Jackson, Pearce, Sharpsteen, Morey, Cottrell, 1937) was released, produced by Walter E. Disney. The press immediately ranked it as the first animated feature film. However, this claim was not true. The Italian-Argentinian animator Quirino Cristiani with his work El Apóstol (Cristiani,1917) was responsible for the first animated feature film in the world twenty years before the North American release. His 1931 film Peludopolis (Cristiani,1931) was also the first animated feature film with synchronised sound recording. Cristiani patented a new and revolutionary system for creating animations using only cardboard cut-outs. The aim of this paper is to give recognition to his work by analyzing his contribution to the seventh art through qualitative documentary research.