Danse Macabre turns 75 oil paintings into nightmare take on Disney's Fantasia

Danse Macabre, the latest short from Dutch animator and artist Hisko Hulsing, will premiere on June 22 in competition at the Annecy Film Festival. Based on the second movement of Dmitri Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony, the film was made from more than 75 hand-painted oil canvases and animated with 2D and CG techniques.

The title references a medieval allegory in which personified death summons people from every social rank to dance, a motif that emerged in the Late Middle Ages likely as a reminder of mortality. Hulsing moves that imagery into a modern apocalyptic register, showing skeleton soldiers descending from the Heavens to bring chaos and destruction to the world of mortals.

The short’s one-minute trailer was released today, and a making-of video is also available. The visuals evoked Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Triumph of Death and other Late Middle Ages and Renaissance depictions of death and the Final Judgment.

Netherlands, Annecy

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