Waking Sleeping Beauty is a 2009 American documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 directed by Disney film producer

Film producer

A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

 Don Hahn

Don Hahn

Don Hahn is an American film producer who has produced some of the most successful Walt Disney animated films of the past 20 years. He currently owns his own film production company called Stone Circle Pictures.-Early life:...

 and produced by Hahn and former Disney executive Peter Schneider

Peter Schneider

Peter Schneider may refer to:* Peter Schneider , German novelist* Peter Schneider , US movie executive, former president of the Walt Disney Studios...

, which documents the history of Walt Disney Feature Animation

Walt Disney Feature Animation

Walt Disney Animation Studios is an American animation studio headquartered in Burbank, California. The studio, founded in 1923 as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio by brothers Walt and Roy Disney, is the oldest subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...

 from the making of The Fox and the Hound in 1981 to the release of The Lion King

The Lion King

The Lion King is a 1994 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 32nd feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...

in 1994. The film covers the rise and fall of Disney's animation division, the effects the new corporate team of Michael Eisner

Michael Eisner

Michael Dammann Eisner is an American businessman. He was the chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until 2005.-Early life:...

, Frank G. Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg

Jeffrey Katzenberg

Jeffrey Katzenberg is an American film producer and CEO of DreamWorks Animation. He is perhaps most famous for his period as chairman of The Walt Disney Company's film division, and for producing DreamWorks animated films such as Shrek, Antz, The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Chicken...

 had on the division, the pivotal role of Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...

, the introduction of the home video format

Home cinema

Home cinema, also commonly called home theater, are home entertainment set-ups that seek to reproduce a movie theater experience and mood with the help of video and audio equipment in a private home....

, and the newfound success the studio had with the releases of The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid (1989 film)

The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was originally released to theaters on November 14, 1989 and is the twenty-eighth film in...

, Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)

Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirtieth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and the third film of the Disney Renaissance period...

, Aladdin, and The Lion King

The Lion King

The Lion King is a 1994 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 32nd feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...

between 1989 and 1994, during the midst of the so-called Disney Renaissance

Disney Renaissance

The Disney Renaissance refers to an era beginning roughly in the late 1980s and ending in the late 1990s, during which Walt Disney Animation Studios returned to making successful animated films mostly based on stories that were known to many, restoring public and critical interest in Disney.The...

.

Unusual for a documentary film, Waking Sleeping Beauty uses no new on-camera interviews, instead relying primarily on vintage interviews, press kit footage, in-progress and completed footage from the films being covered, and personal film/videos shot (often against company policy) by the employees of the animation studio.

Narration is by Hahn, with new audio-only interviews by several of the principal figures, including executives Eisner, Katzenberg, and Roy E. Disney

Roy E. Disney

Roy Edward Disney, KCSG was a longtime senior executive for The Walt Disney Company, which his father Roy Oliver Disney and his uncle Walt Disney founded. At the time of his death he was a shareholder , and served as a consultant for the company and Director Emeritus for the Board of Directors...

 and animator/directors Mike Gabriel

Mike Gabriel

Mike Gabriel is an American animator and film director, best known for his work at Walt Disney Animation Studios and as co-director of the Disney films The Rescuers Down Under and Pocahontas ....

, Rob Minkoff

Rob Minkoff

Robert R. "Rob" Minkoff is an American filmmaker. He is known for directing the Academy Award–winning animated feature The Lion King ....

, Roger Allers

Roger Allers

Roger Allers is an Oscar-nominated American film director, screenwriter, storyboard artist, animator and Tony-nominated playwright...

, Gary Trousdale

Gary Trousdale

Gary A. Trousdale is an American film director known for directing movies such as Beauty and the Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. He frequently directs films with Kirk Wise....

, and Kirk Wise

Kirk Wise

Kirk Wise is an American film director, animator and screenwriter best known for his work at Disney. Wise has directed such Disney movies as Atlantis: The Lost Empire, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast...

. The footage includes filmmakers Tim Burton

Tim Burton

Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...

, John Lasseter

John Lasseter

John Alan Lasseter is an American animator, director and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering....

, Don Bluth

Don Bluth

Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth is an American animator and independent studio owner. He is best known for his departure from The Walt Disney Company in 1979 and his subsequent directing of animated films such as The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail ,The Land Before Time , and All Dogs Go to Heaven ,...

, Ron Clements

Ron Clements

Ronald Francis "Ron" Clements is an American animation director and producer. He is one half of America's leading contemporary animation team with John Musker.-Life and career:...

, John Musker

John Musker

John Musker is an American animation director. Along with Ron Clements, he makes up the duo of one of the Disney animation studio's leading director teams.-Life and career:...

, Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg

Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...

, Robert Zemeckis

Robert Zemeckis

Robert Lee Zemeckis is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit ,...

, Richard Williams, and George Scribner

George Scribner

George Scribner is an artist, director and animator known for his work at Disney.Scribner was born and raised in the Republic of Panama, where he attended grade schools and drew his way through most of his classes. After high school in Florida, he majored in film at Emerson College in Boston and...

, and musicians Alan Menken

Alan Menken

Alan Menken is an American musical theatre and film composer and pianist.Menken is best known for his numerous scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards...

, Howard Ashman

Howard Ashman

Howard Elliott Ashman was an American playwright and lyricist. Ashman first studied at Boston University and Goddard College and then went on to achieve his master's degree from Indiana University in 1974...

, Sir Elton John, and Tim Rice

Tim Rice

Sir Timothy Miles Bindon "Tim" Rice is an British lyricist and author.An Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Tony Award and Grammy Award-winning lyricist, Rice is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus...

. A significant portion of the personal film used was shot by and features Disney animator Randy Cartwright

Randy Cartwright

Randy Cartwright is an American animator.Randy graduated from UCLA in 1974 where he made his student animated film, Room and Board, which won several awards and was included in the Fantastic Animation Festival...

, which is used to bookend the film.

Waking Sleeping Beauty debuted at the 2009 Telluride Film Festival

Telluride Film Festival

The Telluride Film Festival was started in 1974 by Bill and Stella Pence, Tom Luddy and Jim Card in the town of Telluride, Colorado, United States. It is operated by the National Film Preserve....

, and played at film festivals across the country before its limited theatrical release on March 26, 2010 by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.