 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 One
of the great Czech filmmakers, JAN SVANKMAJER was born in 1934
in Prague where he still lives. He trained at the Institute
of Applied Arts from 1950 to 1954 and then at the Prague Academy
of Performing Arts (Department of Puppetry). He soon became
involved in the Theatre of Masks and the famous Black Theatre,
before entering the Laterna Magika Puppet Theatre where he first
encountered film. In 1970 he met his wife, the surrealist painter
Eva Svankmajerova, and the late Vratislav Effenberger, the leading
theoretician of the Czech Surrealist Group, which Svankmajer
joined and of which he still remains a member.
Svankmajer made his first film in
1964 and for over thirty years has made some of the most memorable
and unique animated films ever made, gaining a reputation
as one of the world's foremost animators, and influencing
filmmakers from Tim Burton to The Brothers Quay. His brilliant
use of claymation reached its apotheosis with the stunning
1982 film DIMENSIONS OF DIALOGUE. In 1987 Svankmajer completed
his first feature film, ALICE, a characteristically witty
and subversive adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, and with
the ensuing feature films FAUST, CONSPIRATORS OF PLEASURE
and his newest film LITTLE OTIK (OTESANEK) Svankmajer has
moved further away from his roots in animation towards live-action
filmmaking, though his vision remains as strikingly surreal
and uncannily inventive as ever. |