“To me, animation is like magic. It’s not about making things move, but making things live. This is the domain of magic. And that is what I have always tried to achieve in my films—not just to move objects, but to breathe life into them and explore their inner being.” – Jan Švankmajer

“alchemist of the surreal.” – Brigid Cherry

https://youtu.be/qylAR_TnQrw

Little Otik – 2000

  • Example of live-action film making versus typical animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew0_aDfzNPE

“Meat Love”

“Alice”

Jan Švankmajer is an internationally acclaimed and influential Czech animator and film director. His works are often surreal and make use of live-action, cut-outs, stop-motion, claymation and puppet animation. Because Švankmajer worked under the Communist regime his films remained unknown in the West until the 1980s. Even worse, the government banned him in 1972 from making films, and many of his later films were suppressed. Since then, Švankmajer has been discovered and praised by film and animation fans alike.

Subject vs. Content

“Dimensions of Dialogue”

Act II – Passionate Discourse

Two clay humanoids fall in love sitting across from one another.They begin blending into one another through sensual touching, expressing this by reducing themselves to piles of mashed clay. They reform themselves as a complete man & woman of clay sitting at a table. On the table between them is what may be their infant or a pet. It exists as a formless but friendly lump of clay. The couple compete for the lump’s attention, then begin treating it cruelly. Soon they are throwing the abused friendly lump at one another until they become angry. Turning on one another viciously, they begin mutually to destroy one another, easily done since they’re just moist clay.

Jan Svankmajer’s stop-motion work uses familiar, unremarkable objects in a way which is deeply disturbing. His films always leave me with mixed feelings, but they all have moments that really get to me; moments that evoke the nightmarish spectrum of seeing commonplace things coming unexpectedly to life. It also hinges heavily on images of the mouth, eating and food. Also, violence and destruction are also at the fore in each of the discourses, whether it be figures consuming, tearing, or exhausting their partners in various forms.

 

Two probable Midterm Questions :

How many acts are in “Dimensions of Dialogue”?

  • 3

Name one area of work that Jan Švankmajer specializes in?

  • live-action, cut-outs, stop-motion, claymation and puppet animation.