Behind The Imagineering Story & Walt Disney's Ultimate Inventor, Ub Iwerks
Admission
- General Admission $20
- Members $15
October 26
- Time 11:00 AM
Join Leslie Iwerks, Academy-Award nominated Director and producer for an exciting presentation as part of Disney100: The Exhibition speaker series.
When The Imagineering Story premiered on Disney+ in 2019, it introduced the world to the fascinating stories, people, and technologies behind the 12 Disney Theme Parks currently operating across three continents. Join Director and Producer Leslie Iwerks, granddaughter of Ub Iwerks and daughter of Don Iwerks, both Disney Legends. This very special presentation highlights the remarkable career of her grandfather as portrayed in Walt Disney’s Ultimate Inventor – The Genius of Ub Iwerks written by Don Iwerks, and the making of this highly-acclaimed documentary series, including a screening of one of her favorite episodes, followed by a Q&A session.
About Leslie
Leslie Iwerks is an Oscar® and Emmy® nominated documentary filmmaker and author who has created critically acclaimed, award-winning documentaries, features and series that celebrate the genius, risks and rewards of creative visionaries, showcase heartfelt human tales from the depths of the Guatemalan garbage dumps to the toxic tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the human stories of innovation and enterprise globally. An adventure and travel enthusiast, Iwerks has filmed on all seven continents around the world.
Her body of work includes the six-part docu series The Imagineering Story for Disney+, the four-part series 100 Years of Warner Bros that debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, and the three-part series Superpowered: The DC Story for MAX. Her feature documentaries include The Pixar Story, Ella Brennan: Commanding the Table, Citizen Hearst, Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible, The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story and League of Legends Origins. Her environmental and social issue short documentaries have been Oscar® nominated, Oscar® shortlisted or have won top film festival awards, including Recycled Life, Pipe Dreams, Downstream, and Selling Lies.
Iwerks’ desire to innovate and push boundaries with her filmmaking has been cultivated and inspired by her family upbringing, as her grandfather, Ub Iwerks, was the original designer and co-creator of Mickey Mouse and a multi Academy Award®-winning visual effects pioneer. Her father, Don Iwerks, is an Academy Award® Lifetime Achievement recipient and the founder of the large format film company, Iwerks Entertainment, which has built over 200 large format theaters and projections systems around the world, including the original Iwerks Extreme Screen theater at Kansas City’s Union Station in 1999.
Leslie has been a juror, panelist and sought after guest speaker at film and book festivals, conferences such as TedX, D23, Comicon, THEA, IAAPA, The Walt Disney Family Museum, and Disney Cruise Lines around the world. She is thrilled to return to her family roots in Kansas City, MO for this intimate conversation and presentation.
Only a limited number of tickets are available, and early ticket purchase is highly encouraged. To be a part of all the magical experiences happening at Union Station, please visit www.unionstation.org
The Disney100 Speaker Series is sponsored by the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Missouri Humanities Council.
Come early for the book signing! From 10:00 – 11:00 AM, Leslie will be available to sign books in the Extreme Screen Lobby. Copies of her book, The Imagineering Story: The Official Biography of Walt Disney Imagineering will be available for purchase $35 in the lobby.
The highly acclaimed and rated Disney+ documentary series, The Imagineering Story, becomes a book that greatly expands the award-winning filmmaker Leslie Iwerks’ narrative of the fascinating history of Walt Disney Imagineering.
The entire legacy of WDI is covered from day one through future projects with never-before-seen access and insights from people both on the inside and on the outside. So many stories and details were left on the cutting room floor—this book allows an expanded exploration of the magic of Imagineering. So many insider stories are featured.
° Sculptor Blaine Gibson’s wife used to kick him under the table at restaurants for staring at interesting-looking people seated nearby, and he’d even find himself studying faces during Sunday morning worship. “You mean some of these characters might have features that are based on people you went to church with?” Marty Sklar once asked Gibson of the Imagineer’s sculpts for Pirates of the Caribbean. “He finally admitted to me that that was true.”
° In the early days, Walt Disney Imagineering “was in one little building and everybody parked in the back and you came in through the model shop, and you could see everything that was going on,” recalled Marty Sklar. “When we started on the World’s Fair in 1960 and 1961, we had 100 people here. And so everybody knew everything about what was happening and the status of [each] project, so you really felt like you were part of the whole team whether you were working on that project or not. And, you know, there was so much talent here.”
A must-have for Disney Parks fans!
Make a day of it and stay for Disney100: The Exhibition presented by Bank of America.
