Friday, January 20, 2012
In 2003, Disney released a six minute animated short called Destino, finally bringing closure to a project that began 57 years earlier. The story of Destino goes way back to 1946 when two very different cultural icons, Walt Disney and Salvador Dalí, decided to work together on a cartoon. The film was storyboarded by Dalí and John Hench (a Disney studio artist) over the course of eight months. But then, rather abruptly, the project was tabled when The Walt Disney Company ran into financial problems.
Now fast forward 53 years, to 1999. While working on Fantasia 2000, Walt Disney’s nephew rediscovered the project and 17 seconds of original animation. Using this clip and the original storyboards, 25 animators brought the film to completion and premiered it at The New York Film Festival in 2003. Destino would receive an Oscar nomination for the Best Animated Short Film, among other plaudits from critics.
The clip runs 6+ minutes and features music written by Mexican songwriter Armando Dominguez and performed by Dora Luz. You will find the video housed in the Animation section of Open Culture's collection of Free Movies Online, which now lists 420 films.
// The Ministry of Artistic Affairs notes: The version we have posted here includes an audio remix from Lorenblock's YouTube channel that uses the song "I Feel The Dark" by Opeth rather than the Dora Luz/Armando Dominguez audio track. We think it works better with the piece and makes the short animated film feel much more contemporary. You can find the same film with the original audio here. //
NPR has more on the Disney-Dalí collaboration. Listen to their audio report here.
By Dan Colman in Open Culture.
Special thanks go to Adam Rubin for this and many other amazing links.
