From the first sketches of Micky Mouse to Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber: Disney celebrates one hundred years and it celebrates it in style with an exhibition in Philadelphia designed for all the generations that have grown up with the magic of its stories.
He Franklin Institute andStarting this Saturday, this city hosts the world premiere of this exhibition, the largest held by Disney outside its parks and the event that kicks off the company’s centenary celebrations, which will take place on October 16 of this year.
And it is that although his own walt disney Once said that “it all started with a mouse”, the truth is that it began before Mickey Mouse, in October 1923, when the young and visionary creator signed his first contract to produce animated short films, “Alice Comedies”.
DISNEY ARCHIVES
It is told by the director of the Archives of Disney, becky cline, for whom the most difficult thing in conceiving this exhibition was not so much choosing what was on display, but deciding what had to be left out from among millions of files, drawings, scores, costumes and gadgets of all kinds.
“You had to decide which pieces best tell the story” of Disney, Cline told EFE, who among the selection stood outto two jewels that are exposed at the beginning of the sample.
One, the illustrated book of props created for “Sleeping Beauty” that appears at the beginning and at the end of the film, a golden piece with colored stones that has its interactive replica in the exhibition so that visitors can leaf through the illustrated story.
The other, the snow globe with St. Paul’s Cathedral in London Mary Poppins, with special effects for the occasion.
Both are in a room full of nostalgia, the first of the ten rooms that make up the exhibition, and which also inhabits, for example, the wooden puppet that inspired the creation of pinocchio In 1940.
Some of the exhibits will delight the most devoted fans of sagas like that of Star Wars.
Because next to the BB-8 robot and a soldier of the empire you can see the lightsaber with which he fought Luke Skywalker, or the golden dice that Han Solo used to get his emblematic ship, the “Millennium Falcon”, in a game against Lando Calrissian.
All followers of Disney and factories under his responsibility such as Pixar and Marvel find their place in this show, which also focuses on music.
In a large room, scenes are projected that are accompanied by many of Disney’s best-known songs and melodies, from movies like ‘Lady and the Tramp’, ‘The Three Caballeros’, “Fantasy” or “The Little Mermaid” and the scores of numerous compositions are on display.
And of course, the art of animation.
ROUTE AND STAGES
The exhibition covers all its stages, from the artisan beginnings of the factory Disney to the latest technology, and in addition to exposing the animation mechanisms, it shows the miniatures or models that were made of each character, developing all their details before bringing them to life.
But not all are cartoons In Disney History, many of his films are flesh and blood, as are the stage adaptations. Among them the Broadway musical “The Lion King”, with the main costume of Simba, its protagonist, exposed for the occasion.
It is not the only piece of clothing that can be seen. There is also the red dress of Cruella de Vil for the film ‘cruella‘ (2021), that of Captain Barbossa, played by Geoffrey Rush in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” or the compass that the protagonist of this film, the famous captain Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp, always carried with him.
Throughout the tour, the visitor discovers the Disney universe or recalls many images from his childhood or youth, or from the childhood and youth of his children or grandchildren. And there are objects for all tastes and memories for all generations.
Christoph Scholz, The director of Semmel, the company in charge of mounting this exhibition, told what his first memory of Disney was when he was a child and lived in East Germany, before reunification: The comic books that his relatives in West Germany hid from him when they went to visit.
AND Becky Cline, who grew up in Southern California, along with Disneyland and the company’s studios, also keeps in his memory the first movie he saw in the theater when he was four years old: “Mary Poppins”.
A LOT OF MAGIC
Because there is a lot of magic and also a lot of nostalgia in this exhibition that after Philadelphia will go through Chicago and Kansas City and from which another unit has been made that will open in munich (Germany) in spring, to continue later in London.
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That only for now. Because the company’s idea, Cline said, is that Disney and his century of stories will travel the world with his exhibition for the next five years.
