"Destino", Disney, and Dali

Salvador Dali's early work attracted the attention of creative people in many fields. He created a lobster-print dress for Elsa Schiaparelli and a "costume for the year 2045" for Christian Dior. His interest in film led him to collaborate on a number of films including Spellbound with Alfred Hitchcock.

In 1945-46 Salvador Dali and Walt Disney began collaboration on a Destino, a short film which would not be completed for nearly sixty years. After eight months of work by Dali and Disney studio artist John Hench, the project was put on hold, presumably because of studio financial concerns during World War II. Hench had produced 17 seconds of footage involving two tortoises in hopes of kindling enough interest to get the project completed.

While working on Fantasia 2000 in 1999, Walt Disney's nephew Roy found the shelved project, including the original story boards with Dali's Surrealist Surrealist art work and iconic imagery. He enlisted Disney Studios France to resurrect and complete the film. The finished product, a film of about six minutes, is the work of a team of twenty five animators working from Dali and Hench's story boards, the journal's of Dali's wife Gala and guidance from John Hench. Hench's original 17 second clip is included in this work of traditional and computer animation produced by Baker Bloodworth and directed by French animator Dominique Monfréy and set to music by Mexican composer Armando Dominguez adapted by Michael Starobin.

Disney's 2008 press release describes the film as "a first-hand example of Disney's interest in avant garde and experimental work in animation, Destino was to be awash with Dali's iconic melting clocks, marching ants and floating eyeballs."

Destino has been shown as part of the Dali and Film exhibit which has been at the Tate Modern from as part of the Dalí exhibit at the LA County Museum of Art, and at an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art called Dalí: Painting and Film, as well as at an exhibit at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Disney released Destino as a special feature on the Fantasia & Fantasia 2000 Special Edition Blu-ray released on November 30, 2010. If you simply can't wait to get the Fantasia DVD, YouTube has a "demo copy" of the film running in several variations. Destino is a love story, go watch it. You'll love it too.