- Film
Docs: Absorbing “Claydream” Spotlights Pioneering Figure in Animation
Interesting and heavy, consequential questions of art’s relationship to commerce hang all over the terrifically engrossing documentary Claydream, informing its bittersweet portrait of the rise and fall of the man largely considered the father of modern-day clay animation. That its subject’s actual name remains unknown outside of tight-knit industry circles while his rebranded, formerly eponymous studio, wrested away from him two decades ago and given a new moniker, has gone on to garner considerable acclaim with a fanciful origin story speaks to a time-honored Hollywood axiom: when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.