DIFF to Honor Glen Keane with Texas Avery Award

The Dallas International Film Festival and Reel FX will honor veteran animator Glen Keane with the Texas Avery  Award during a special 20th anniversary screening of Aladdin at noon, April 21, at the Angelika Film Center. A Q&A session with Keane will take place afterwards. (Details)

A 36-year veteran of Walt Disney Feature Animation, Keane has worked on The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Beauty and the Beast, and Tarzan. Most recently Keane served as Supervising Animator and Executive Producer on Disney’s 2010 box office hit, Tangled. He is also the author and illustrator of a series of children’s Bible parable books featuring Adam Raccoon and King Aren the Lion.

The son of The Family Circus cartoonist Bil Keane, Glen Keane became an animator while enrolled in the Cal Arts fine arts program in the 1970s. He joined Disney in 1974 and trained under noted animators Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas, and Eric Larson — three of the studio’s legendary “Nine Old Men”. He began as an animator on The Rescuers before being promoted to directing animator on The Fox and the Hound.

The Texas Avery Award honors the legacy of cartoonist, voice actor and director Frederick Bean “Tex” Avery, who created such iconic characters as Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Droopy, Porky Pig, and Chilly Willy during the Golden Age of Hollywood animation. Created in 2007, the award has been presented to such animators as Academy Award winners Pete Docter (Up, Monsters Inc.) and Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille), and Academy Award nominees Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders (How To Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch), Henry Selick (Coraline, James and the Giant Peach), and Chris Wedge (Ice Age, Robots).