No matter how much of a Disney fan you are, there’s one Disney film you might not have seen—and it’s one Walt Disney made in collaboration with the famous Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.
Disney and Dalí may seem like an unlikely pair, but after meeting at a dinner party in 1944, they became friends. Dalí was a great admirer of Disney and even considered him the great American Surrealist. They had an idea to collaborate on an animated short film, which they called Destino.
Beginning in 1946, Dalí created 22 paintings and 135 sketches and storyboards for the film. The studio was able to create only approximately 20 seconds of animation before financial difficulties that had been caused by World War II forced them to put production on hold. The project gathered dust for decades.
In 1999, Walt Disney’s nephew Roy E. Disney rediscovered the film and decided to complete it, working with a team that included one of the original animators (who, by that time, was 90 years old!). Disney released Destino in 2003. The seven-minute film tells the story of Chronos, the personification of time in Greek mythology, who falls in love with a mortal woman. The animation depicts the two characters floating across Dalí’s surreal landscapes to the tune of a Spanish ballad.
When Disney released Destino nearly 60 years after its conception, it received a warm welcome. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2004.