Filmmaker digs into lives of ‘Curious George’ creators

NEW YORK — It takes an inquisitive mind and a steady spirit to get the whole story about the creators of “Curious George.”

Ema Ryan Yamazaki, 27 and a graduate of New York University’s film school, has spent the last two years working on a documentary about H.A. Rey and Margret Rey, the husband-and-wife team behind the multimillion-selling children’s franchise.

The Reys were Jewish refugees during World War II, fleeing from Paris in 1940 on homemade bicycles.

Yamazaki, whose previous credits include directing a short documentary about an 800-year-old Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, and editing the HBO documentary “Class Divide,” had read “Curious George” in Japanese as a girl and was surprised to learn that no one had made a film about the Reys.

Through a mutual friend, she got in touch with the literary estate and received its cooperation.

The Adventures of George’s Curious Creators, and will include original animation of the Reys themselves, and has begun a Kickstarter campaign to help with funding.

I grew up in Japan reading ‘George’ in Japanese, and ... when I learned they were these German immigrants who had fled the Nazis on bicycles with the first “Curious George” book with them, it was enough for me to be interested. ...

300 boxes (at the University of Southern Mississippi) of the Reys’ personal archives, anything from their wartime journals to letters they wrote to each other, the process of how they created Curious George — so the rough sketches all the way through to the fine prints, (and) all this other artwork they did that they never published.