Disneyland Handcrafted is a new documentary about the construction of Disneyland from July 16, 1954 to its opening date on July 17, 1955. The fact that this groundbreaking park was built in one year is mind-boggling. Today, it can take five years to construct one Disney theme park ride!

When Walt Disney and Walt Disney Studios embarked on the project, they had to cobble together funding, including a major investment from ABC, to which Disney provided television programming in return. The show ''Walt Disney's Disneyland'' aired weekly on ABC and not only featured Disney content, but also teasers and updates on the construction of the upcoming park.

So the park absolutely had to open on its one-year deadline not only because the financing was so tight, but also because Walt Disney himself was giving updates, showing films of construction progress, and promising its opening date on national television on a regular basis.

A few years ago, when documentarian Leslie Iwerks was researching a series for Disney+ on Imagineering, she discovered a treasure trove of footage of that year of Disneyland construction, most of which had never been seen or touched since it was made. She was able to make this remarkable movie using only that footage (and film from ABC's live coverage of the opening day). Tthere are no talking heads and no still shots in the movie, just the footage and voice-over interviews that the participants had done over the years.

By the way, the complete ABC live broadcast of Disneyland's 1955 opening can be seen, and it's a bizarrely chaotic broadcast with flubbed lines, mistaken camera shots, and even a weirdly inappropriate kiss of a very chaotic day.

Disneyland Handcrafted is a fascinating movie, and it's interesting that visually, it doesn't really tell Walt Disney's story, or even the company's story. It tells the story of the workers the people who worked at the highest level and under great pressure to make the project an incredible success. You see designers laboring over the aesthetics of fake rocks. You see craftspeople building the Peter Pan ships. You see construction workers hanging on wires, walking on beams, diving underwater things that would cause an OSHA inspector to close down the site and maybe the whole company today.

The construction and its deadline could easily have failed. But because it didn't, Disneyland transcended the lowly amusement park and became the first immersive theme park, basically inventing an entirely new industry and artform of experiential entertainment.

I attended a screening of the movie this week, and learned that the movie itself almost didn't happen. It was originally funded by Disney+, but before completion, it languished for lack of funding. Another division of Disney, Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, came to the rescue and backed the movie's completion. I'm guessing that's why it's on YouTube for free as well as on the Disney+ streaming service it's purpose has explicitly become marketing for the theme parks.

I asked Iwerks, if the purpose of the filming of construction was to provide occasional construction updates on the television program ''Walt Disney's Disneyworld,'' why was there so much footage, and so artistically done. The scope of the filming seems to go far beyond the need for short snippets to be shown on the tiny black and white televisions at the time.

''I think Walt was somebody who probably just wanted to document a lot of things, and this was historic. And who knows what it would be used for down the road.''

It's amazing that almost nothing was done with this extensive and beautifully shot footage for over 70 years, but Iwerks has done a wonderful job of using it to present this important part of American cultural history.