While the Disney animation studios were churning out hit films like Who Shot Roger Rabbit and Beauty and the Beast, there were backstage battles between artist and management, backbiting executives, and other industry intrigues playing out. Those stories are told in the new documentary, Waking Sleeping Beauty.

Although their relevant experience had been in animation, Schneider (sen at left in his Disney days) says it was not a big stretch to create a documentary.

Disney has gone on to further animated success since 1994, but Schneider says that segment of the film industry looks a lot different—and a lot more populous—now.

Producer Peter Schneider will answer questions about Waking Sleeping Beauty  following the 7 pm screening on May 20 at the Rialto Cinema’s Lakeside.  See the trailer for the film below.

Pre-industrial skills (such as friction fire-making, show at left) are making a comeback at the first annual Buckeye Gathering, an event that has drawn more than 200 neo-primitive students to an isolated hilltop above the Russian River.

The California Buckeye, namesake plant for the event, was chosen as an especially apt symbol of their intentions for the Gathering, says co-organizer Russell Sparks.

Genine Coleman, a co-organizer of the Buckeye Gathering, says it represents the realization of a growing desire to hold this kind of a “skill share” event somewhere in northern California.

Their site selection process finally settled on the Indian Education Center at Ya-Ka-Ama, near Forestville.

Here are some pictures from the gathering: A group decorating a rawhide parfletch, basket weaving materials, Mayan weaving, and the central arbor. Photos courtesy of Genine Coleman and the Buckeye Gathering.

Even in patients with advanced Alzheimer’s Disease, familiar music from long ago can awaken memories and prompt interactive behaviors. But how does that happen? A U.C. Davis researcher is working to unravel the neural mechanisms within the brain.

Much of the research that has been done so far on how music stimulates the brain has used musical samples that are not particularly stimulating. Dr. Petr Janata, associate professor of Psychology at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain, says that a new round of studies should work with recognizable samples, and could discover that the brain encodes different types of music in different ways or areas.

That’s one area of research that Janata hopes to explore himself, along with expanding the studies he’s done on Alzheimer’s patients to include different age groups.

Dr. Peter Janata will discuss his research into “Music, Memories and the Brain"  in a public presentation Friday, Feb. 19 at 8 pm in the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa, a benefit event for the Sonoma County Bach Society.

You can read more about research into the associations between music, memory and Alzheimer's Disease in this Wall Street Journal article.

A whole world of handmade guitars are on display in Santa Rosa this weekend, as dozens of instrument makers showcase their individual variations on this traditional craft.

Cotati guitar-maker Mark Berry was a longtime furniture maker when he got the itch to try making a guitar soon after his 50th birthday.

Which comes first in the guitar-making process, the neck or the body? For Mark Berry, it's a  chicken-and=egg question; it's not the sequence that matters, but how they come together. The images at right are a sampling of his finished instruments.

Duane Noble is seen above in his workshop with both a conventional acoustic guitar and a harp guitar on the right. To find out more about these instruments, you can read an exhaustive history of harp guitars.

Michael McCarthy (above in his workshop in Berkeley) used computer technology to develop his design for the underside of his arched top acoustic jazz guitars. He also employs a computer-driven router to carve the single-piece spruce guitar top, seen below with the interior side exposed.

These three luthiers are among the dozens of craftsmen who are showing their creations this weekend at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts. Click here for a schedule of events.