MANILA, Philippines — A Pixar Animation Studios short animation film about a Filipino boy with autism can now be streamed on YouTube.
“Float,” a short animation film by Filipino-American animator Bobby Rubio, was uploaded to YouTube last February 26 and now has over four million views.
“Pixar Animation Studios and the SparkShorts filmmakers of FLOAT are in solidarity with the Asian and Asian American communities against Anti-Asian hate in all its forms. We are proud of the onscreen representation in this short and have decided to make it widely available, in celebration of what stories that feature Asian characters can do to promote inclusion everywhere,” Pixar wrote in the video description.
Rubio said that the story of the short animation film was about him and his son.
“When I first thought of the short, I actually was thinking of making the characters white. And it’s because of my unconscious bias, I assume, because I was like, I don’t know if anyone wants to see a Filipino-American,” he said in a 2019 television interview.
But his co-worker insisted to cast Filipino characters, saying: “This is a story about you and your son. How’s your son going to feel when he looks up at the screen and that character is white.”
“That hit me and I didn’t want my son to think that he wasn’t worthy of it. So from that point on, I was like, ‘Okay, I’m doing this. We’ll tell our story.’ And we’re going to make them Filipino-American,” Rubio said.
“Float” was first shown last November 2019 on Disney+. The streaming site is not yet available in Southeast Asia. — Video from Pixar via YouTube
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