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IN A QUIET coffee shop around the corner from the Light House Cinema, Chad Walker and David LaMattina talk about Ireland as if they’ve lived here all their lives.
They haven’t.
But through making the new documentary Don Bluth: Somewhere Out There, they’ve spent years immersed in one of the most improbable chapters in Irish cultural history: the moment when legendary animator Don Bluth left Hollywood and helped lay the foundations for what would become a global animation powerhouse.
Their documentary, which premiered at the Savannah Film Festival last year, screens in Dublin tonight for only the second time.
Savannah was a natural launchpad (an archive of 88-year-old Bluth’s lifetime of work was showcased there in October last year) but both directors are clear that Dublin carries a different weight.
“This feels like bringing it home,” Walker said.
Even though Don is American, a huge part of his legacy is Irish.
Bluth’s legend begins with a rupture in the animation industry.
In 1979, disillusioned with what he saw as declining artistic standards, he walked out of The Walt Disney Company, taking a number of fellow animators with him.
It was an extraordinary act of defiance, leaving the most powerful animation studio in the world because you believed you could do better. Bluth had idolised Walt Disney, so the move was not an easy one.
“You don’t make that move without a certain level of ego,” LaMattina explained.
“You have to believe you can go toe-to-toe with the biggest name in animation.”
What surprised the documentary makers most, they said, was Bluth’s lack of bitterness. The pair interviewed Bluth several times during the production of their documentary.
“He never framed it as ‘I’ll show them,’” Walker said.
“He still speaks about Disney with respect. He wanted them to be better. He wanted the artform to be better.”
And for a time in the 1980s, he proved he could tussle with the best of them. The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail and The Land Before Time demonstrated that hand-drawn animation could still be lush, ambitious and emotionally devastating.
In forcing competition, some critics and films experts have argued, Bluth helped spark the conditions for Disney’s own renaissance in the ’90s.
“One of the things we kept coming back to in the film,” LaMattina said, “is that he achieved his goal. He didn’t replace Disney, but he pushed them.”
Just as his independent studio was gaining momentum in the US, Bluth made another bold move. In 1986, with financial backing and support from the IDA, Sullivan Bluth Studios relocated to Dublin, opening a state-of-the-art facility near the Phoenix Park.
At its height, it employed more than 350 people, most of them Irish.
“There wasn’t really an animation industry here at that level before that,” Walker said.
“That’s not an exaggeration. He helped build an entire industry here.”
Crucially, Bluth didn’t just bring productions. He invested in training.
In 1989, he helped establish Ireland’s first dedicated animation course at Ballyfermot Senior College, now known as the Irish School of Animation.
The programme would go on to produce generations of animators, including the founders of Cartoon Saloon, the Oscar-winning studio behind The Secret of Kells and Wolfwalkers.
LaMattina was careful not to overstate it.
“I don’t want to speak on something I’m not 100% on,” he said, “but from everything we’ve learned, he changed the landscape here. Completely.”
Walker agreed. “You can trace a line. Not in a simplistic way, obviously Irish animation talent is its own thing, but he created infrastructure. He created opportunity. He created the belief that this could happen here.”
That legacy outlived the studio itself. The building now serves as the headquarters for the Local Government Management Agency (no doubt there are much less creative minds there now).
Though Sullivan Bluth would close its Dublin operations in the mid-1990s after financial difficulties, its alumni dispersed across the industry, and the Ballyfermot institute would pump out talents such as Richie Baneham (who has worked on the Avatar franchise), Nora Twomey (of Cartoon Saloon fame) and Aidan McAteer (who has worked on a litany of children’s shows, including Peppa Pig and My Little Pony)
Many would go on to win Oscars, BAFTAs and Emmys. The boom in Irish animation, now one of the country’s most successful creative exports, has roots in that Bluth experiment.
“One of our only regrets,” Walker said, “is that we didn’t get to speak to more Irish animators who worked with him while we were putting this documentary together. There are so many stories there.”
They joined a Facebook group of former Sullivan Bluth employees (aptly titled ‘I worked for Don Bluth in Ireland’) while researching the documentary. Many of those artists are expected to attend tonight’s screening at the Light House.
“That means a lot,” LaMattina said. “This story isn’t just nostalgia, it’s their history.”
“Bluth himself still speaks of Ireland so fondly.”
According to the documentary directors, Ireland shaped Bluth during many of his creative years.
“He loved his time here,” Walker said. “It changed him.”
The directors spoke about his affection for Irish storytelling, the mythology, the melancholy, the sense that stories carry moral weight.
“He felt at home in that,” LaMattina said.
“There’s something very Irish about his films, the emotional intensity, the darkness alongside the hope.”
While preparing for the Dublin premiere, the pair travelled to Donegal. The landscape, they say, made immediate sense.
“You stand there and you think, of course an animator would fall in love with this,” Walker says. “It feels cinematic.”
The documentary carries another Irish imprint: its score was composed by Fergal Lawler, the drummer of The Cranberries.
LaMattina, a lifelong Cranberries fan, described being shown around Limerick by Lawler while they worked on the music.
“At one point he pointed out the spot where Dolores first sang ‘Zombie’,” he said, still sounding slightly stunned. “I was just in awe.”
It felt fitting, they say, that a film about the rebirth of animation in Ireland would be underscored by one of the country’s most recognisable musical voices.
“He just got it,” Walker explained.
“I would have conversations with him about parts of the documentary, telling him ‘we’d love it to sound like this, maybe we should add some synth here’, and he would just completely understand it and provide the perfect sounds,” Walker said.
Both Walker and LaMattina previously worked at another animation studio, Blue Sky. Though not animators themselves, they were steeped in the culture of modern animation. Bluth’s films were formative for them.
“That’s what made it nerve-wracking,” Walker admitted.
“We loved him. The Secret of Nimh, The Land Before Time, All Dogs go to Heaven, our generation grew up on these movies.”
Bluth is now 88 and still animating. Still drawing. Still thinking about movement and expression.
“There’s something incredibly humbling about interviewing someone who’s still doing the thing,” LaMattina said.
“He’s not done. Far from it, he’s working.”
They were nervous about telling his story, about capturing the complexity of a man who walked away from Disney believing he could raise the bar.
“But he was candid,” Walker said.
“Honest about the ego it took. Honest about the failures too.”
When Bluth finally watched the completed documentary, he told them he was proud.
“That meant everything,” LaMattina said quietly.
“That’s the only review that really mattered to us.”
As evening approaches, cinema-goers will file into the Light House to watch a story that begins in Hollywood but finds its emotional centre in Dublin.
Bluth didn’t conquer Disney.
He didn’t build a permanent empire in Dublin, but he did something arguably more enduring: he proved animation was worth fighting for – and in doing so, helped seed an industry that now thrives here.
“He believed the artform deserved better,” Walker said.
“And because he believed that, a lot of other people got to believe it too.”
For a few luminous years, Dublin was the beating heart of hand-drawn animation.
Tonight, in a cinema just down the road from where two passionate filmmakers are finishing their coffees, that story gets to breathe again.
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