Lunacy

Loosely based on two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and inspired by the works of the Marquis de Sade. In 19th century France a young man is plagued by nightmares in which he is dragged off to a madhouse. On the journey back from his mother’s funeral he is invited by a Marquis he meets at lunch to spend the night in his castle. There he witnesses a blasphemous orgy and a ‘therapeutic’ funeral. He tries to flee but is taken to a lunatic asylum where the patients have complete freedom and ...

Little Otik

When a childless couple learn that they cannot have children, it causes great distress. To ease his wife's pain, the man finds a piece of root in the backyard and chops it and varnishes it into the shape of a child. However the woman takes the root as her baby and starts to pretend that it is real.

Spiklenci slasti

Faust

A very free adaptation of Marlowe's 'Doctor Faustus', Goethe's 'Faust' and various other treatments of the old legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil. Svankmajer's Faust is a nondescript man who, after being lured by a strange map into a sinister puppet theatre, finds himself immersed in an indescribably weird version of the play, blending live actors, clay animation and giant puppets.

Der Tod des Stalinismus in Böhmen

“Der Tod des Stalinismus in Böhmen” ist eine sarkastische Abrechnung, die Jan Svankmajer nach dem Ende des Kommunismus in seinem Heimatland für die BBC drehte: Im Zeitraffer wird die Geschichte der Tschechoslowakei seit 1945 erzählt, die immer unter dem Einfluss der jeweiligen Machthaber im Kreml stand. Mit Fotomontagen, Tonfiguren und animierten Gegenständen zeigt Svankmajer metaphorisch den Zwang zur Anpassung, die Unterdrückung von Individualität und die Gleichschaltung in Politik und ...

Darkness, Light, Darkness

A human body gradually reconstructs itself as its various component parts crowd themselves into a small room and eventually, after much experimentation, sort out which part goes where.

Virile Games

A man sits down to watch a football match, which seems to consist of the players being violently mutilated in various inventive ways. The players then leave the football pitch and invade the spectator's flat...

Alice

A quiet young English girl named Alice finds herself in an alternate version of her own reality after chasing a white rabbit. She becomes surrounded by living inanimate objects and stuffed dead animals, and must find a way out of this nightmare- no matter how twisted or odd that way must be. A memorably bizarre screen version of Lewis Carroll’s novel ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’.

The Pit, the Pendulum and Hope

A short film based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" and Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's "A Torture by Hope".

Dimensions of Dialogue

A three-part depiction of various forms of communication.

Byt

The Garden

Frank visits his friend Josef, who introduces him to his pedigree rabbits and his wife Mary. Frank is more interested in the slightly unsettling fact that Josef and Mary's garden fence is entirely made up of living people holding hands. Finally, Frank asks Josef how he manages to keep the fence together..

Historia Naturae (Suita)

An eight-part animated portrait of various species, accompanied by a different style of music. The various parts are: Aquatilia (foxtrot), Hexapoda (bolero), Pisces (blues), Reptilia (tarantella), Aves (tango), Mammalia (minuet), Simiae (polka) and Homo (waltz). Each animation mixes drawings, pictures, real animals and animated skeletons.

Punch and Judy

Two puppets, Punch and Judy, do battle to the death over the custody of a live guinea pig.

Et Cetera

A small, animated figure learns how to use a whip, a pair of wings and a house.

J.S. Bach: Fantasia in G minor

A man plays the Bach piece of the title on the organ, accompanied by images of stone walls with cracks and holes that grow and shrink, intercut with images of doors and wire-meshed windows.

A Game with Stones

In this early stop-motion film by Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer, a device consisting of a clock, a pendulum, a faucet and a bucket enacts a series of events whenever the clock chimes.