Spoleto Festival 2010 - Official Website

In the mid ´80s, the fabulous Walt Disney animation studios were going through a crisis. They were divided between the newcomers eager to innovate and the veterans anxious not to yield their control. This situation led to a series of failures and led to pessimistic forecasts. Perhaps the glorious days of animation were over. Maybe the public did not care anymore. To expect that the situation would improve, they probably had to believe in fairy tales.
Waking Sleeping Beauty is not a fable but the real story of how Disney regained its magic with an extraordinary series of successes - Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King and others - all within a decade.
The director Don Hahn and the producer Peter Schneider had a decisive role in the recovery. They were part of the new generation of Disney that produced some of its most sensational projects. Hahn´s documentary offers a fascinating view of what happened in both the creative team as in the executive team of Michael D.Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Roy Disney (Walt´s nephew). The process was not always easy. Hahn (who still works at Disney) with a refreshing frankness recounts the conflicts among ego, the increase in costs, the failure of experiments that others would have rather forgotten. In moments of tension, the illustrators’ favourite offense was to draw cruel caricatures of their chiefs. Hahn has shown the best, along with interviews, home videos, internal notes and unpublished videos. All those who are hungry for Hollywood gossip will appreciate this dish. Those who love animated films, instead, can enjoy the story that does justice to the many writers, artists and composers who have created the Disney phenomenon. The documentary also includes key figures who left the company, like Don Bluth, John Lasseter and Tim Burton. At one time, children thought that the signature Walt Disney meant that films were the creation of one man. This is a mature picture that reveals the experience of a team in all its complexity.
Thom Powers