Sep 11, 2024

Israeli Filmmaker Assaf Garay Wins $200,000 Documentary Award for Fleischer Studios' Documentary “Cartoon America”

Cartoon America, a documentary on the history of animation, has won the sixth annual Library of Congress Lavigne/Ken Burns Film Award. Director Asaf Garay will receive a cash prize of $200,000.

Beginning in 2019, the award is presented annually to an exemplary documentary film that tells a compelling story about American history. The annual award in the documentary category is presented by the Library of Congress, the Better Angels Society, Ken Burns, and the Crimson Lion/Lavin Family Foundation.

New York-based Fleischer Studios created the Betty Boop, Popeye, and Superman cartoons in the 1930s and 1940s, and revolutionized many animation techniques during the Golden Age of American Animation.

Prior to Cartoon America, Israeli filmmaker Garay produced a series on Israeli humor (“In the Jewish Land,” 2005) and a feature film about Israeli poet Nathan Alterman ("Sentimentality Allowed, 2012) and numerous documentaries for Israeli television. He also wrote, directed, and produced The Muses of Bashevis Singer (2015), a documentary about Nobel Prize-winning Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, and The Hebrew, about comics in Israeli history. Superhero” (2016), which he also directed and produced.

It is unclear where “Cartoon America” can be found or how it was released. According to the film's description, the film “uses visuals including pencil tests, storyboards, drawings, behind-the-scenes home movies, and a highly autobiographical cartoon of the Fleischer family, along with interviews with family members, historians, and the animators they inspired, to tell this family's dramatic rags to Telling the Story of Wealth”. The funding proposal for the film is available online (download PDF).

In his acceptance statement, Ken Burns said, “‘Cartoon America’ reminds me why, like the Fleischer brothers, I have pursued visual storytelling and why this medium continues to be so important and influential.”

Congressional Librarian Kara Hayden added, “Animation has created some of the most iconic figures in American cinema. We are delighted to have chosen this documentary as our first place winner for its vivid portrayal of two of the early pioneers of the animation industry who brought us so much laughter and joy.”

Hayden selected the winning film in consultation with Barnes. The Galley Awards will be presented on September 17, 2024 in a ceremony with Hayden, Burns, and a congressional speaker to be announced. This year's presenting sponsor is Bank of America. Other sponsors are Peter and Lindsay Snell, Bain Capital, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Meredith DeWitt, Annabelle and Jackson Dunn, FTI Consulting, and Public Strategies Washington.

The runner-up, Nora Shapiro's Magic & Monsters, will receive a $50,000 cash prize. The film chronicles the dark history of the Minnesota Children's Theatre Company and how former child actors seek justice and healing after their founder was convicted of child sexual abuse.

Each of the four finalists will receive a cash prize of $25,000.