April’s instalment is brought to us by Rebecca Rowe, Awards Manager at the Show Me Shorts Film Festival. (Call for entries for this year’s festival is now open)
Destino
The first film I’d like to share with you is one many people have no idea even exists. What is so special about this film? Well, it is the fantastical collaboration of two mega-stardom artists: Walt Disney and Salvador Dali (yep it’s pretty ace). I saw it at my very first film festival ever (Melbourne International Film Festival 2003). As I sat at a cheap eats Chinese takeaway authentically slurping my noodles, I spotted it in the programme and immediately marked it on the calendar.
The film is Destino, a poetic take on love and time, an artistic marriage of two cultural titans, and a truly beautiful and historic piece of short film cinema. It had been shelved since 1946 but when (over 50 years later) the full storyboards, sketches and original score were discovered in a Disney vault, Roy Disney (Walt’s son), assembled a creative team and the film was completed.
When I delved deeper into the ‘behind the scenes’ I found that the surrealist short had mysteriously been abandoned before it reached completion and was considered a lost cause. At the Melbourne festival screening they mentioned that there was difficulties at the time with making final decisions (no surprises there). I’m guessing Salvador Dali’s fiery temper and emotional impulsiveness got Walt up and packing… with all the work locked up in his possession.
Can you imagine finding this discovery? It’s not like finding your matching sock at the back of the washing machine (although that is greatly satisfying). Fortunately for us, someone’s spring clean brought this beautiful film out for the rest of the world to finally enjoy.
The story is told to a song of love lost and re-discovered; a woman sees and undergoes surreal transformations. Her lover’s face melts off, she dives into the shadow of a bell, which turns into her dress then her head becomes a dandelion. A pod from her floats to a statue to awaken the man. Who then has ants crawl out of his hand that turn into Frenchmen riding bicycles with baguettes on their heads… Oh there’s plenty more but you should watch for yourself.
There is all the favourite imagery that we are most familiar with of Dali’s – the melting clocks and hourglass sand, the checker boards, the playdoh-esque stretched faces propped up with crutches – and yet the film is still full of Disney, especially the musical score with its emotive orchestral crescendos. Also the heroine who dances and floats elegantly in time to the sorrowful tune reminds me of The Little Mermaid, while the use of birds and creatures to help her through her journey is classic Snow White. Aside from the sheer beauty of this short and the opportunity it offers to view a unique collaboration, I just love that it’s made so long ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GFkN4deuZU&feature=youtu.be
Muto
My other film for this month’s Screening Room is not a love story but it is animation, it’s most definitely art inspired and it’s all about one Artist’s creations mutating to form image after image. The film is Muto, by the graffiti/street artist Blu, painted on public walls on the streets of Buenos Aires and Baden.
There is no storyline as such, but if I was to write a synopsis it would go something like; a plethora of creatures and adult-looking babies take a journey round the ‘burbs while feeding on human heads (sometimes their own) to the point of implosion. Blu just called it an ‘ambiguous animation’ (yeah that probably works better…).
Blu’s structure for his films/art begins with original sketches jotted down on his sketchbook, which in turn acts as an image database for his murals. Then, in combining his images with the surrounding architecture, Blu uses the most traditional painting tools: brushes and a paint roller. And with only two colours (black and white) he applies his designs.
His ideology behind the work is fueled from a desire to take domestic walls and ground in urban environments and majestically turn these ordinary areas into animated sketchbook masterpieces. The result (as you will see) is a simple idea, yet dramatic in execution.
If any of you readers are already Blu fans you will be happy to know there is a new documentary that follows Blu called Megunica (www.megunica.org.)
Ok, so that’s a wrap for this month! Admittedly this may be my own ambiguous take on tying these films together, but to me both films fuse art, music and film to provoke childlike wonder in visual elements not from the world that we live, but seen and interpreted in the minds of the artists. The world of the subconscious is one we all love to indulge in and animation is a perfect medium for this. I hope you enjoy these films as much as I have.
