Jules Engel

Director

Date of birth : 03/11/1909

Date of death : 09/06/2003

City of birth : Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]

Founder of the experimental-animation program at CalArts in 1970 (where he taught for over thirty years), and a founder of the UPA animation studio, Jules Engel choreographed the famous hippopotamus/alligator dance, the bottle-dancing Cossack thistles and the mushroom ballet within "Fantasia" (1940). His students would go on to animate such features as "The Nightmare Before Christmas", "Finding Nemo", "The Lion King" and "Toy Story".