"Today Disneyland is so fully formed that it's taken for granted. We debate ticket prices and crowd calendars, strategizing the optimal time to visit. The new documentary "Disneyland Handcrafted" hits pause on all of that. Culled from about 200 hours of mostly unseen footage, director Leslie Iwerks' film takes viewers back to the near beginning, tracing the largely impossible creation of the park from a year before its opening."
"For while Disneyland is corporately owned and managed, the park has become a cultural institution, a reflection of the stories and myths that have shaped America. Disneyland shifts with the times, but Iwerks' film shows us the Walt Disney template, one that by the time the park opened on July 17, 1955, was so set in place that it would soon become a place of pilgrimage, a former Anaheim orange grove in which generations of people would visit as a rite of passage."
"Iwerks comes from a family of Disney royalty. Her grandfather, Ub, was a legendary animator instrumental in the development of Mickey Mouse. Her father, Don, was a cinematic and special effects wizard who worked on numerous Disney attractions, including the Michael Jackson-starring film "Captain EO." As a documentarian, Iwerks has explored Disney before as the director of "The Imagineering Story" and has a long career of films that touch on not just Hollywood but also politics and environmental issues."
About 200 hours of mostly unseen footage trace Disneyland's construction during the year before its July 17, 1955 opening. The park's creation unfolded as a near-impossible, tightly scheduled race against time that required rapid design, improvisation, and problem-solving across engineering, effects, and construction teams. Contributions from a family legacy of animation and cinematic special-effects expertise, including Ub and Don Iwerks, played a notable role. The result transformed an Anaheim orange grove into a cultural institution and pilgrimage site that reflected and helped shape American stories and myths and established a reproducible Walt Disney operational template.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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