(Paris 1857- Villejuif 1938).
Emile Courtet, who in 1879 adopted the pseudonym Cohl, was born on January 4, 1857 in Paris. At 20 he founded his own magazine which soon went under. A disciple of the caricaturist André Gill, he quickly established himself as a talent in his own right. He contributed to numerous publications, and was involved in various artistic movements: Les Hydropathes, les Incohérents, precursors to the Dadaists. He took up photography and in 1884/85 Parisian literary society flocked to his studio to have their portraits taken. Léon Gaumont, attracted by his imaginative talent, employed him as writer/director with a disposition for visual trickery. Films in which objects appeared to move of their own volition were starting to appear and Cohl was quick to grasp the technical processes involved and thought to apply the same techniques to drawings rather than objects. In around 1907 he devised his first frame-by-frame camera as well as the characteristics of "Fantoche" who was the first "character" to appear in animated cartoons. In 1908 he made: Le mouton enragé, a humorous film, and Le violoniste, a drama, which preceded his first cartoon Fantasmagorie (comprising around 1900 images) shown at the Théâtre du Gymnase on August 19. He was then 51. The success of the film encouraged Cohl to persevere in this direction. Over the next few months, he animated several other films, ranging in length from 70 to 120 metres, and characterised by a succession of metamorphoses. He brought inert objects to life: matches, vegetables, furniture and dolls sometimes substitute for drawn sequences, articulated cut-out characters, all animated with supreme skill. These feats of filmmaking justify his appellation as the pioneer of film animation. By 1923, he had made 300 films but then was forgotten. He died on January 21 in 1938, in a hospice, just as Emile Reynaud had some 20 years before.
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