Pandora
September 12, 2008, 10:51pm
1
A Szech surrealist/animator whose works often highlight a darker and more irrational aspects of human nature, usually also mixed with dark humor. Food and cannibalism (insatiability) are recurring themes in his works and reflect our need to consume and devour, an obsession which he believes might some day lead to our own demise as a consumer society. He’s probably best known for his surreal version of Alice in Wonderland and his more recent Little Otik . The subconscious (symbology) is a huge element in his work, and is sometimes portrayed through a child’s perception (which, though not yet socialized and is more “pure”, is not, he shows, as innocent as is customarily thought of, hinting at Freudian influence on his work).
Alice:youtube.com/watch?v=CIB-LnoCNBM
…His films play off highly personal imagery and concerns against veiled political and social critique, juxtaposing violence and tenderness, humour and pathos. He and his team of collaborators (including his wife, Eva Švankmajerova), are recognized as some of the most technically accomplished animators, especially of object animation, in the business. His belated fame, after 20 years of filmmaking in relative obscurity, has had a twofold influence: inspiring a generation of independent animators working both in the commercial market and the more rarefied field of the festival circuit, while also helping to build a greater audience for a medium seen, hitherto, primarily as one only suitable for children.
Ironically, while his films are often characterized by others as “adult” animation, Švankmajer himself insists that, “I’m interested, in the first instance, in a dialogue with my own childhood. Childhood is my alter ego. . . . Animation can bring the imagery of childhood back to life and give it back its credibility. The animation of objects upholds the truth of our childhood.” (Italics his.) Thus, all of Švankmajer’s works, even the most abstract, like Johann Sebastian Bach: Fantasia G-Moll (1965) and Spiel mit Steinen (1965), function in part as an act of reparation for the lost or repressed animistic beliefs of childhood. Many of his films feature children—Do pivnice (1983), Alice (1988)—exploring a menacing landscape of animated objets trouvés, responding alternately with fear, bravery, and retributive aggression to an incomprehensible and threatening world. One of his finest early works, Jabberwocky (1971), evokes children all the more strongly by their virtual absence, as a nursery comes to life and performs a sinister cabaret, starring dolls born from the stuffing of a larger doll, a dancing penknife that kills itself, and a sailor suit which acts as host to their performances. The spanking which opens this film is characteristic of the sadism and cruelty which pervades his work, and is especially notable in his other adaptation of Lewis Carroll, Alice, his only feature film to date. There the heroine is tempted by jars of marmalade that contain hidden drawing pins and threatened by a scissors-wielding rabbit. Like Freud, whom he greatly admires, Švankmajer is interested in exploring the obscure sexuality of childhood, the polymorphous perversity which has not yet learned to separate the animate from the ianimate as a source of pleasure, which discovers sensual delight in the materiality of objects, no matter how decrepit and tawdry. His representation of the body as a plastic site of decay and transformation, pleasure and pain, often recalls Buñuel, Borowczyk, and Fellini as well as Breton, Duchamps, and the Surrealists and Dadaist movements.
filmreference.com/Writers-an … r-Jan.html
Eclipse
September 13, 2008, 2:45am
2
Gah I’ve seen that version of Alice. It’s pretty scary honestly. Glad to have been reminded of this.
“No room! No Room!”
ceadem
September 15, 2008, 8:19pm
3
wow wasn’t even aware he mad an alice in wonderland film, definitely going to have to track that one down
Eclipse
September 16, 2008, 7:51am
4
ceadem:
wow wasn’t even aware he mad an alice in wonderland film, definitely going to have to track that one down
It’s MUCH more bizarre than the cartoon version.
ceadem
September 16, 2008, 9:03pm
5
Ha! That comes as no surprise. I hope theres plenty of stop-mo
I like what I’ve seen so far though, sileni and faust were very fun to watch, love the stop-mo too 