Karl Cohen of ASIFA-SF has brought AWN the news that animator Zack Schwartz, one of the founders of UPA, passed away on January 13, 2003 in Israel. After working at Disney, most notably as an art director on BAMBI and FANTASIA, Schwartz went on to work under Frank Tashlin at Screen Gems and was a founder of UPA. In 1946, Schwartz sold his interest in the studio and moved to New York, where he worked in television advertising, eventually becoming an advertising agency executive. After teaching at Sheridan College in Canada in the '70s and '80s, Schwartz eventually moved to Israel, where he taught at the Animation Center in Tel Aviv. Karl sends this memoriam: "I had the pleasure of hearing Zack talk about his career in animation in the 1980s. I also heard him talk to students at San Francisco State University once about being an art director at Disney on the Mickey Mouse sequence in FANTASIA. It was a truly memorable talk, as he pointed out the many technical problems they were presented by the sequence and how they solved them I know he will be missed by many people." ASIFA-Israel will be accepting written memories, sketches or photos of Schwartz for the ASIFA-Israel Internet magazine. They can be emailed to asifanews@studiopolygon.com.
