El Apóstol
6.8 /10 1 Votes
Director Quirino Cristiani Screenplay Quirino Cristiani Writer Quirino Cristiani | 6.6/10 IMDb Genre Animation, Comedy, Drama Duration Country Argentina | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Language Silent film
Spanish (Castellano) intertitles Release date November 9, 1917 Genres Animation, Silent film, Black-and-white, Indie film Similar movies Quirino Cristiani directed El Apostol and Peludopolis | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
El Apóstol (Spanish: "The Apostle") was a 1917 Argentine animated film utilizing cutout animation, and the world's first animated feature film.
Production background
The film was written by Alfonso de Laferrere and directed by Quirino Cristiani. The film consisted of a total of 58,000 frames played over the course of 70 minutes (at 14 frames per second).
The film was a satire, with President Hipólito Yrigoyen ascending to the heavens to use Jupiter's thunderbolts to cleanse Buenos Aires of immorality and corruption. The result is a burnt city. The film was well received by critics at the time and a commercial success. A fire that destroyed producer Federico Valle's film studio incinerated the only known copy of El Apóstol, and so it is now considered a lost film.
A 2007 documentary Quirino Cristiani: The mystery of the first animated movies, directed by Italian animator Gabriele Zuchelli researches the history of the studio and recreates the look and technique used in El Apóstol.