The Land Before Time. An American Tail. Anastasia. All Dogs Go To Heaven.

If you loved those movies like my sons and I did, you are in for a treat. The team behind those iconic animated classics will be at the 10th annual Plaza Classic Film Festival. The film festival is August 3 - 13 in downtown El Paso, but Don Bluth and Gary Goldman will be on-stage at the Plaza before a screening of The Secret of NIMH. You'll be able to catch them and the movie at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, August 12 in the Plaza Theatre. You can also get a more close-up experience at the annual Filmmaker’s Brunch at 11 a.m. Sunday, August 13 at the Foundation Room at 333 North Oregon.

Bluth/Goldman classics like An American Tail, The Land Before Time, Anastasia, and All Dogs Go to Heaven, will be shown during the Plaza Classic Film Festival. You'll also be able to see one of my favorite cheesy movies of all time, Xanadu, starring Oliva Newton-John and Gene Kelley in a roller disco extravaganza. Xanadu has a two-minute animated sequence by Bluth & Goldman.

Bluth was born in El PaAs a boy, Bluth wanted to work for Walt Disney Productions after seeing the 1944 reissue of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in El Paso. His family later moved to Utah, then California. Bluth worked with Watsonville, California native Goldman on several Disney movies. They left in 1979 to start their own independent animation company with fellow animator John Pomeroy.

They currently are working on a movie version of their popular ‘80s arcade game Dragon’s Lair.

The Plaza Classic Film Festival’s seventh annual collaboration with the El Paso Museum of Art includes the exhibition An American Animator, Don Bluth. It features nearly 50 of Bluth’s drawings, sketches, animation cels and other examples of his hand-drawn animation style. They are on loan from the Savannah College of Art and Design, to which they donated their animation archives from several films. It will be up July 1 through September 7 in the Peter and Margaret DeWetter Gallery.

Bluth & Goldman’s last six movies, including Thumbelina and Anastasia, will be shown for free in the museum’s auditorium.

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