Dalí, between Cinema and Art

On the occasion of the 20th Rome Film Fest, the Museo del Corso presents a mini-exhibition curated by the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí. This exhibition, Dalí. Revolution and Tradition, offers visitors the opportunity to delve deeper, through a series of rarely screened documentaries in Italy, not only into the artist Salvador Dalí, but also into the man and his surroundings. This helps to better understand the complexity and nature of the Spanish genius and to transcend the character he himself created.

This is the program of the festival: 

 - On October 21, 2025, at 7:00 PM, the first two documentaries will be screened. Destiny (1946), the story of Salvador Dalí and John Hench, is based on Salvador Dalí's unfinished animation. Completed in 2003 (director: Dominique Monfery; producers: Baker Bloodworth and Roy Disney), it runs 7 minutes. On January 14, 1946 in fact, Salvador Dalí signed a contract with Walt Disney to make an animated short film entitled Destiny. To work on the project, the painter settled at Disney Studios in Burbank, California, where he began creating a series of drawings and oil paintings. The main characters, a ballerina and a baseball player, who is also the god Chronos, develop Dalí's original concept, which revolves around the importance of time in waiting for destiny to enter our lives. The film was intended to have a running time of between 6 and 8 minutes. However, only 15 seconds were made, and it was not until 2003 that Disney resumed and completed the project, recovering Dalí's early ideas and sketches. The other documentary, Autoportrait mou de Salvador Dalí (1966), directed by J.C. Averty and lasting 70 minutes, was granted by the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, INA, France. This self-portrait by Salvador Dalí, directed by the legendary French director and television producer Jean-Christophe Averty, presents itself as a hybrid, halfway between a biographical documentary, a happening, and video art, filmed in Gala and Salvador Dalí's house in Portlligat, in the idyllic setting of Cap de Creus. For the project, Dalí opened the doors of his home, his studio, and his imagination to the cameras to tell viewers the story of his life and immerse them in his creative process. 

- On October 24, 2025, at 7:00 PM, it’s the turn of the abridged version of the documentary trilogy Salvador Dalí, In Search of Immortality, produced by the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí and directed by David Pujol, will premiere. The trilogy presents Dalí the artist in a completely new way, with an innovative perspective, like an intricate puzzle that must be pieced together little by little. Through the film, viewers are offered the key to better understanding and going beyond the character of Dalí.The trilogy delves into the artist and the man, as well as all the aspects that contributed to establishing him as an immortal artist. It is a journey back through his life, from his childhood in Figueres, his hometown, to his studies at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, where he met Federico García Lorca and Luis Buñuel. It continues with his stay in Paris, which brought him into contact with artists such as Miró, Picasso, and members of the Surrealist group, until his arrival in the United States, concluding with his return to his eternal landscape of Portlligat. The documentary also highlights his encounter with the important figure of Gala, the great love of his life, a woman capable of understanding his talent, his obsessions, his complexity, and providing him with the balance necessary to become an internationally renowned artist.

Photo: Salvador Dalí Self-Portrait with Raphael's Neck / Self-Portrait with Raphael's Neck 1921 Oil on canvas © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Rome, 2025
Dalí, between Cinema and Art