Huffington Post – Disney showcases its past & future with “Snow White” and “Paperman” screenings at New York Film Festival

Jim Hill

12 years ago

Disney showcases its past & future with "Snow White" and "Paperman" screenings at New York Film Festival

You'd think, given her previous dealings with poison apples, that Snow
White would be somewhat hesitant when it comes to visiting the Big
Apple.

But Disney's very first princess (you know? The one who narrowly avoided
a bad case of the Sleeping Death) is heading for the City That Never
Sleeps. This Saturday morning, Snow and her seven tiny friends can be
seen at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. Where the New York Film Festival
— in recognition of the 75th anniversary of the release of Walt Disney
Studios' first full-length animated feature — will be screening a
state-of-the-art digital version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which will be hosted by Eric Goldberg.

Eric Goldberg at work at his animation desk during production of Disney's "The
Princess and the Frog." Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

And to hear this animation industry legend talk (Goldberg is probably
best known as the supervising animator of the Genie character in Aladdin as well as being the co-director of Pocahontas), it's entirely appropriate that Snow White's 75th anniversary be acknowledged and celebrated at this year's NYFF.

"After all, as Walt was increasing the size of his studio's staff in preparation for the start of Snow White, he reached out and recruited some of New York City's top animators — people like Art Babbitt and Grim Natwick
— to come work on this animated feature," Eric explained during a
recent phone interview. "And it's these experienced vets who got their
starts at New York-based animation studios like Fleischer &
Terrytoons that then helped make the lifelike movement of the human
characters like the Wicked Queen or Snow White in this movie possible."

You see, that's the thing that many film fans don't quite understand about Snow White
— that because this was the first full-length animated feature to ever
be put into production, there was this huge learning curve. There was a
lot of stuff that Walt and his team had to learn the hard way on this
project.

So what did Walt and his team of animators learn as they worked on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" ? To get the answer to that question, you can either click on the headline above or go straight to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-hill/disney-showcases-its-past_b_1919265.html