This film is a collaboration between Disney films and Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali. It was started in 1945 and only saw the light of day in limited release recently. Here’s the gist from Wikipedia: “Destino (the Galician, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian word for “destiny“) was storyboarded by Disney studio artist John Hench and artist Salvador Dalí for eight months in late 1945 and 1946; however, financial concerns caused Disney to cease production. The Walt Disney Company, then Walt Disney Studios, was plagued by many financial woes in the World War II era. Hench compiled a short animation test of about 18 seconds in the hopes of rekindling Disney’s interest in the project, but the production was no longer deemed financially viable and put on indefinite hiatus.
In 1999, Walt Disney’s nephew Roy Edward Disney, while working on Fantasia 2000, unearthed the dormant project and decided to bring it back to life. Disney Studios France, the company’s small Parisian production department, was brought on board to complete the project. The short was produced by Baker Bloodworth and directed byFrench animator Dominique Monfrey in his first directorial role. A team of approximately 25 animators deciphered Dalí and Hench’s cryptic storyboards (with a little help from the journals of Dalí’s wife Gala Dalí and guidance from Hench himself), and finished Destino’s production. The end result is mostly traditional animation, including Hench’s original footage, but it also contains some computer animation. The 18 second original footage that is included in the finished product is the segment with the two tortoises.
The finished product was meant to be part of the cancelled film Fantasia 2006 but when the short was completed after the film’s cancellation, Destino, as well as three other completed segments (The Little Matchgirl, One by One, and Lorenzo), was changed to a short subject.
Destino premiered on June 2, 2003 at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in Annecy, France. The six-minute short follows the love story of Chronos and the ill-fated love he has for a mortal female. The story continues as the female dances through surreal scenery inspired by Dalí’s paintings. There is no dialogue, but the sound track features a song by the Mexican composer Armando Dominguez.
The short film was very well received; it won many awards and was nominated for a 2003 Academy Award for Animated Short Film. Destino was released theatrically in a very limited release with the film Calendar Girls. As of 2010, Disney has confirmed releasing the short with “their next feature release as a short,” but Destino was never attached to any of Disney’s releases in 2008 or the following year.
The film was shown as part of the exhibition Dali & Film at Tate Modern from June to September 2007, as part of the Dali exhibit at the LA County Museum of Art from October 2007 to January 2008, and at an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art called Dalí: Painting and Film from June to September 2008 as well as at an exhibit at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2008. In mid-2009 it has had exposure in Melbourne, Australia at the National Gallery of Victoria through the Dali Exhibition ‘Liquid Desire’.
