Biography

Pocahontas is a 1995 American animated adventure[1] musical romantic historical drama film based on the life of the Native American woman Pocahontas. It portrays a fictionalized account of her historical encounter with Englishman John Smith and the Jamestown settlers who arrived from the Virginia Company. The film was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures on June 16, 1995. It is the 33rd Disney animated feature film and the sixth film produced and released during the period known as the Disney Renaissance. The film was directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg (his feature directorial debut). The voice cast stars Irene Bedard and Mel Gibson as Pocahontas and Smith, respectively, with David Ogden Stiers, Russell Means, Christian Bale, Billy Connolly, and Linda Hunt providing other voices. The score was written by Alan Menken, who also wrote the film's songs along with Stephen Schwartz. After making his directorial debut with The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Gabriel conceived the film during a Thanksgiving weekend. The project went into development concurrently with The Lion King (1994), and attracted most of Disney's top animators. Meanwhile, Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg decided the film should be a serious romantic epic in the vein of Beauty and the Beast (1991), in hope that like Beauty, it would also be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Screenwriters Carl Binder, Susannah Grant, and Philip LaZebnik took creative liberties with history in an attempt to make the film palatable to audiences. Pocahontas received mixed reactions from reviewers, who praised its animation, titular character, musical score, themes, voice performances, and songs, but criticized its story with its lack of focus on tone. The film's historical inaccuracies and racial overtones received polarized responses. Pocahontas earned over $346 million at the box office. The film received two Academy Awards for Best Musical or Comedy Score for Menken and Best Original Song for "Colors of the Wind". According to critics, Pocahontas has influenced subsequent films.