Destino
Encyclopedia
Destino is an animated short film released in 2003 by The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...

. Destino is unique in that its production originally began in 1945, 58 years before its eventual completion. The project was a collaboration between American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...

 Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

 and Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

, and features music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 written by Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 songwriter
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...

 Armando Dominguez and performed by Dora Luz. It was included in the Animation Show of Shows
Animation show of shows
The Animation Show of Shows is a traveling selection of the year's best animated short films, curated and presented by Acme Filmworks founder, Ron Diamond. It began in 1998 with the aim of showing the most original, funny, intelligent short animated films from all over the world and presenting them...

 in 2003.

History

Destino (the Galician
Galician language
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...

, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

 and Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 word for "destiny
Destiny
Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...

") was storyboard
Storyboard
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence....

ed by Disney studio artist John Hench
John Hench
John Hench was an employee of The Walt Disney Company for more than sixty-five years, an exceptionally long tenure which saw the rise of nearly every Disney animated feature and theme park....

 and artist Salvador Dalí for eight months in late 1945 and 1946; however production ceased not long after. The Walt Disney Company, then Walt Disney Studios, was plagued by many financial woes in the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 era. Hench compiled a short animation test of about 17 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 E. Disney
Roy E. Disney
Roy Edward Disney, KCSG was a longtime senior executive for The Walt Disney Company, which his father Roy Oliver Disney and his uncle Walt Disney founded. At the time of his death he was a shareholder , and served as a consultant for the company and Director Emeritus for the Board of Directors...

, while working on Fantasia 2000
Fantasia 2000
Fantasia 2000 is a 1999 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was the 38th feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and a sequel to 1940's Fantasia...

, unearthed the dormant project and decided to bring it back to life. Disney Studios France
Walt Disney Animation France
Walt Disney Animation France was an animation studio located in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, France that worked on both feature length Disney films and television series...

, the company's small Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

ian production department, was brought on board to complete the project. The short was produced by Baker Bloodworth and directed by French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 animator Dominique Monfréy 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
Gala Dalí
Gala Dalí , usually known simply as Gala, was the wife of first Paul Éluard, then Salvador Dalí, and an inspiration for them and many other writers and artists.- Early years :...

 and guidance from Hench himself), and finished Destinos production. The end result is mostly traditional animation
Traditional animation
Traditional animation, is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand...

, including Hench's original footage, but it also contains some computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....

. The 17 second original footage that is included in the finished product is the segment with the two tortoises (this original footage is referred to in Bette Midler
Bette Midler
Bette Midler is an American singer, actress, and comedian, also known by her informal stage name, The Divine Miss M. She became famous as a cabaret and concert headliner, and went on to star in successful and acclaimed films such as The Rose, Ruthless People, Beaches, and For The Boys...

's host sequence for The Steadfast Tin Soldier
The Steadfast Tin Soldier
"The Steadfast Tin Soldier" is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a tin soldier's love for a paper ballerina. After several adventures, the tin soldier perishes in a fire with the ballerina. The tale was first published in Copenhagen by C.A...

 in Fantasia 2000, as an "idea that featured baseball as a metaphor for life").

Destino premiered on June 2, 2003 at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival
Annecy International Animated Film Festival
The Annecy International Animation Film Festival was created in 1960 and takes place at the beginning of June in the town of Annecy, France. Initially occurring every two years, the festival became annual in 1998...

 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 soundtrack features a song by the Mexican composer Armando Dominguez.

The short film was very well received; it won many awards and was nominated for the 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Destino was released theatrically in a very limited release with the film Calendar Girls
Calendar Girls
Calendar Girls is a 2003 comedy film directed by Nigel Cole. Produced by Buena Vista International and Touchstone Pictures, it features a screenplay by Tim Firth and Juliette Towhidi based on a true story of a group of Yorkshire women who produced a nude calendar to raise money for Leukaemia...

.

The film was shown as part of the exhibition Dalí & Film at Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...

 from June to September 2007, as part of the Dalí 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 Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida in 2008. In mid-2009, it had exposure in Melbourne, Australia at the National Gallery of Victoria through the Dalí exhibition Liquid Desire, and from late 2009 through April 2010 at the Dayton Art Institute
Dayton Art Institute
The Dayton Art Institute is a museum of fine arts in Dayton, Ohio, USA. The Dayton Art Institute was rated one of the top 10 best art museums in the United States for kids. The museum also ranks in the top 3% of all art museums in North America in 3 of 4 factors...

 in Dayton, Ohio
Dayton, Ohio
Dayton is the 6th largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County, the fifth most populous county in the state. The population was 141,527 at the 2010 census. The Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 841,502 in the 2010 census...

, in an exhibit entitled Dalí and Disney: The Art and Animation of Destino.

Home video release plans

The Disney DVD "True-Life Adventures, Volume 3" has a trailer for Destino and mentions a DVD release. In 2007, the True-Life Adventure series was suspended and those titles previously announced were moved to the Walt Disney Treasures
Walt Disney Treasures
The Walt Disney Treasures is a two-disc DVD set of classic Disney works. They cover work from the studio's earliest days to their more recent work...

 line. Destino was subsequently scheduled for release on November 11, 2008.

From the January 20, 2008 press release:
A June 2008 press release for the Walt Disney Treasures line revealed Destino was being excluded from a 2008 Treasures release. According to Treasures host Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin is an American film and animated film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...

, the film was still likely to see an eventual DVD release, yet not necessarily within the Treasures moniker.

Destino is available as a special feature on the Fantasia & Fantasia 2000 Special Edition Blu-ray released on November 30, 2010.

External links

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