Richard Williams To Screen Footage of His New Film in Los Angeles

The legendary Richard Williams, eighty years young, will appear in Los Angeles on Friday, October 4th, to celebrate the opening of a new exhibition devoted to his career, as well as take part in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science’s annual Marc Davis Celebration of Animation. The lecture, entitled This Amazing Medium with Richard Williams, is obviously worth attending, even if not for the amazing bit casually tossed in at the end of the program description:

Williams will discuss the work that has inspired him and the people who have influenced him. Some of Williams’s favorite clips will be shown to illustrate the artistic and emotional range of this amazing medium, from the charm of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the imagination of Fantasia to the stylized sophistication of Rooty Toot Toot and the subtlety of expression in Toy Story.

Williams will also enlighten audiences about his own work through clips from The Little Island, The Charge of the Light Brigade, A Christmas Carol, The Return of the Pink Panther, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Circus Drawings and the first theatrical trailer for The Thief and the Cobbler, as well as a preview of his work-in-progress, Prologue.

That’s right, audiences will finally get a glimpse of the secretive film project that Richard has been working on privately for years. In an interview earlier this year, Williams revealed that he had nearly finished a six-minute prologue to the untitled film project “so if I do drop dead we will still have something.”

Tickets to the lecture will go on sale September 3, and are $5 (general admission)/$3 (students and Academy members). The lecture begins at 7:30pm at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater (8949 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211).

As mentioned above, the Academy will also open a new gallery exhibition on the same night called “Richard Williams: Master of Animation”. The description sounds swell:

Take an exciting visual tour through Richard Williams’s career and experience his master class approach to the art of animation through this dynamic exhibition. Twelve unique zones, accompanied by matching chapters from Richard Williams’s new iPad App, show aspiring animators and pros alike how to direct animation and how Williams approaches character movement, dialogue, animal action and more. On view through December 22, 2013, Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and weekends noon to 6 p.m.