Max and Dave Fleischer are animation icons. And now, a new documentary about them, Cartooning America, is on its way to becoming an icon, as well: the movie has been named the sixth annual winner of the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film. Director Asaf Galay will be awarded $200,000 for the multi-part film, which chronicles the lives and teachings of the Fleischers.
If you’re not familiar, the Fleischer Brothers are known for cartoons about Betty Boop, Popeye, and notably to the purview of this site, Superman. In fact, the Fleischers’ 1940s animated series was the first-ever superhero cartoon, something James Gunn’s new DCU is paying tribute to by using their design for the new, animated logo for DC Studios.
Not only that, but per a release provided to Comic Book Club, “they were the first to mix live action with animation, to premiere the first sound cartoon, to pioneer the use of 3D, and to create a feature animation based on an original screenplay. Cartooning America explores all that using pencil tests, storyboards, drawings, behind-the-scenes movies, and more, alongside interviews with everyone from family members to historians and animators inspired by their legacy.
“We’re thrilled to recognize these filmmakers whose work helps to provide us with a sense of place that is often reassuring during extraordinary times like these,” said Ken Burns. “CARTOONING AMERICA reminds me why I – like the Fleischer brothers – have pursued visual storytelling, and why this medium remains so vital and affecting. We are so grateful to Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine whose generous support, through the Crimson Lion/Lavine Family Foundation, has made this prize possible for the last six years.”
CARTOONING AMERICA uses visuals including pencil tests, storyboards, drawings, behind-the-scenes home movies, and the Fleischer’s very autobiographical cartoons, alongside interviews with family members, historians, and the animators they inspired, to tell this family’s dramatic rags to riches to rags again story.
Read more about the movie, as well as runner-up Magic & Monsters, and four finalists, below.
WINNING FILMS
Winner: CARTOONING AMERICA, directed by Asaf Galay
The Fleischer brothers were a family of New York Jewish immigrants whose inventions helped create America’s animation industry. Their cartoons were hilarious and strange, reflecting the world they lived in. It’s a rags to riches to rags again story, of a family whose influence on animators working today was profound.
Runner-Up: MAGIC & MONSTERS, directed by Norah Shapiro
Founded in 1965, the Minnesota Children’s Theatre Company gained worldwide acclaim. However, in the 1980s, its founder was convicted of child sexual abuse, revealing a dark history within the theater. Now, a group of former child actors seeks justice and healing, offering a blueprint for reckoning with institutional trauma post-#MeToo.
FINALISTS
AREA 2, directed by James Sorrels
City leaders tacitly permitted Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his “Midnight Crew” of detectives to torture dozens of Black detainees in his notorious “Area 2” police station between 1972 and 1991. Area 2 chronicles the epic fight for justice through the journeys of three Midnight Crew torture survivors.
BEHIND THE LINES, directed by John Benitz
Based on The New York Times bestselling books, Behind the Lines follows a passionate historian on his journey around the world to find and preserve letters written during times of war. This personal and often emotional exploration of the war experience uncovers our worst impulses but also the secrets to our shared humanity.
DORY PREVIN: ON MY WAY TO WHERE, directed by Julia Greenberg &Dianna Dilworth
Dory Previn was a successful lyricist for Hollywood films in the 50s and 60s who in the 70s transformed into an influential cult singer-songwriter, and famously went public about her schizophrenic diagnosis, ultimately accepting her voices and anticipating a modern-day neurodiversity movement.
WEDNESDAYS IN MISSISSIPPI, directed by Marlene McCurtis
Throughout Freedom Summer of 1964, teams of activist Black and White women from northern cities risked all to fly into Mississippi, conducting undercover civil rights work to leave a lasting legacy for local empowerment and national progress. This was Wednesdays in Mississippi, a landmark all-women achievement too long overlooked.