"Hollywood Home Movies: Disneyland" screens tomorrow night at the Linwood Dunn Theater in LA and it's sold out. It sounds amazing.
The feature is pieced together from the massive Academy Film Archive collection of Americans' home movies, and it traces the history of Disneyland from planning meetings in 1948 to the opening in 1955 to a visit from Steve McQueen in 1970. It's not just a cool way to trip down the Yesterland memory-lane and see all the bad-ass rides that went extinct (Mule Trains! Inner Space! Monsanto House of the Future!) — it's also a window into the American Human at Leisure through the ages.
Don't worry if you couldn't get tickets — just have a nice, leisurely spelunk through the Prelinger Archives's home movie collection — invite your friends over for a screening of your faves!
The evening isn't just a celebration of the park's 60th anniversary but also a glimpse at how Disneyland "was a similar and yet distinct experience for all different kinds of people from all different places," said Randy Haberkamp, the academy's managing director for programming, education and preservation.
"Seeing real people in a particular year, you realize what people were wearing, the way people behaved in an amusement park," Haberkamp said. "It does show the differences in culture over the decades and the difference in the attractions."
Classic Hollywood 'Hollywood Home Movies: Disneyland' is an E-ticket to the park's past
[Susan King/LA Times]
