Disney-Dali collaboration unveiled

A film collaboration between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney is to receive its British premiere at Tate Modern.

The unlikely pair began work on the short animation, Destino, in 1946.

It married Dali’s surrealist imagery with Disney cartoon characters.

The project was halted due to financial difficulties until Walt Disney’s nephew, Roy E Disney, stepped in and completed it in 2003.

He was at the London gallery today to unveil the finished film.

The Tate is also displaying storyboard drawings from the animated feature.

It is one of the highlights of the Dali & Film exhibition, which opens on Friday.

Visitors will be able to view Dali’s collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock in Spellbound (1945), and the two films he co-wrote with Luis Bunuel in 1929-30: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or.

The show brings together more than 100 works from collections around the world, including 60 paintings.

The Persistence Of Memory, one of Dali’s most famous paintings, will be shown in Britain for the first time in 27 years.

A Tate spokesman said: “Dali & Film is a groundbreaking exhibition and an unprecedented exploration of the central role of cinema in Dali’s art.

“His collaborations with Luis Bunuel, Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney created some of the most memorable and influential scenes in avant-garde cinema.”

The exhibition runs until September 9.