J.B. Kaufman |

Books

Kaufman at the Movies: Articles & Essays 1987–2021, Volume 2

Alongside his full-length books, J.B. Kaufman has been writing articles, essays, festival program notes, and other short-form pieces since 1987. Most of those short pieces are long out of print. Now the best of them, and some new ones, are collected in a two-volume anthology. Volume 1, pending copyright approvals, is currently delayed. Volume 2 is available now on Amazon.

This second volume focuses on stories from the rich and endlessly varied world of American silent and early sound cinema. These articles are based on decades of archival research and interviews with the original filmmakers, and some are substantially updated and expanded from their originally published versions.

The Making of Walt Disney's Fun and Fancy Free

The inaugural entry in a series of Monographs published by the Hyperion Historical Alliance, this volume relates the story behind Fun and Fancy Free (1947), one of Walt Disney’s most delightful and underappreciated postwar features. This was a different kind of “package feature,” combining two featurette-length stories in a single film. Here for the first time is the full, absorbing story of its production, profusely illustrated with over 125 sketches, paintings, animation drawings, and photos, many never previously published.

Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History

by David Gerstein and J.B. Kaufman, edited by Daniel Kothenschulte
Taschen, the distinguished European publisher long renowned for luxurious art books, has already embarked on a series of outstanding volumes on Disney history. The latest in the series, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, is a sumptuous, lavishly mounted pictorial history of the world’s preeminent Mouse, from his scrappy beginnings in 1928 to the present day. Overflowing with a cornucopia of exciting, rare, and gorgeously reproduced images, the book also includes a wealth of new historical research by Disney scholars J.B. Kaufman and David Gerstein.

Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series

by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman
Originally published in 2006 but long out of print, Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies returns in a specially revised and updated 10th-anniversary edition. This is the ultimate companion to the Silly Symphonies (1929-1939), a landmark series of films originally launched by Walt Disney as a “musical novelty.” The Symphonies soon blossomed into something far more ambitious: an innovative series of animated cartoons that introduced new characters, ideas, and techniques with each new release.

Pinocchio: The Making of the Disney Epic

Walt Disney’s second feature-length animated film was nothing less than epic in its vision and in the magnitude of its technical achievement. This volume recounts the full fascinating history of the making of the film, and is sumptuously illustrated with images that celebrate the lush visual magic of Pinocchio.