I spent the day yesterday in Philadelphia Museum of Art. One of the reasons I went there was to try to see the Salvador Dali's exhibitions but the tickets have been sold until the end of April. While in the museum, I was able to see two films that Dali was a big part of. In the video Gallery of the museum, two intriguing projects have been running together in the continuous loop, the early "Un Chien Andalou" (17 minutes) and the recently released, animated Destino (6 minutes). This was the first viewing for me. I kept coming back to the gallery for few more times and I never was tired of both short films.
What would've happened if Salvador Dali and Walt Disney had decided to work together on a project? The answer is "Destino" , the 6 minutes, 40 seconds long animated film based on a Mexican love ballad entitled "Destino". Dali and Disney admired each other's work and their meeting at a dinner party in 1945, inspired the idea for collaboration. Although, the film was abandoned in 1946 due to the economic problems created by WWII, Dali's storyboards, sketches, and paintings were saved. Work began on Destino in May 2001 and in June 2003, "Destino" premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
Set to the Mexican ballad, the idea behind the film was described by Disney as "just a simple love story - boy meets girl". Dali called it "a magical exposition on the problem of life in the labyrinth of time". The end result is a tender, beautiful, sad, and charming love story as only Dali could imagine it, complete with the images as only he could create by the power of his imagination - melting clocks, tuxedo-clad eyeballs without faces, ballerinas, ants that turn into bicycles, and surprising baseballs.
