- Description:
- DVD - Region 2. viewing copy. 3 videodiscs of 3.
Titles
+ Last Trick, The
- Alternate Title:
- The Last Trick of Mr. Schwarzwald and Mr. Edgar
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 11 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1964
- Language:
- Czech language with optional English subtitles
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- Two magicians, Mr. Schwarzwald and Mr. Edgar, try to outdo each other in performing elaborate magic tricks, leading to a violent ending.
- Link to:
- AFI catalog
+ J. S. Bach - Fantasy in G Minor
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 9 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1965
- Language:
- Czech language with optional English subtitles
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Animation
- Notes:
- 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.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Game with Stones, A
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Studio A
- Running Time:
- Short. 9 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1965
- Language:
- English subtitles
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- 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.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Punch and Judy
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 10 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1966
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- Two puppets, Punch and Judy, do battle to the death over the custody of a live guinea pig.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Et Cetera
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 7 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- tinted b/w
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1966
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- A small, animated figure learns how to use a whip, a pair of wings and a house.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Historia Nature, Suita
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 9 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1967
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- 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.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Garden, The
- Alternate Title:
- Zahrada
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 16 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1968
- Language:
- Czech language with optional English subtitles
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Comedy
- Notes:
- 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..
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Flat, The
- Alternate Title:
- The Apartment
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 13 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1968
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Silent Cinema
- Notes:
- A nondescript man is trapped in a sinister flat, where nothing seems to obey the laws of nature.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Picnic with Weissmann
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Studio A
- Running Time:
- Short. 11 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1968
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- In one of Jan Svankmajer’s many mind-blowing, deliberately weird short films, a picnic consists of a suit sunbathing, a phonograph playing records, a shovel digging holes, and a camera taking pictures.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Don Juan
- Alternate Title:
- Don Šajn
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 31 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1969
- Language:
- Czech language with optional English subtitles
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- The age-old story of Don Juan, played by giant puppets.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ The Ossuary
- Alternate Title:
- Kostnice
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 10 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1970
- Language:
- Czech language with optional English subtitles
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- A non-narrative voyage round Sedlec Ossuary, which has been constructed from over 50,000 human skeletons (victims of the Black Death).
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Jabberwocky
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 13 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1971
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- In stop-motion animation, a wardrobe moves through the countryside. It arrives in a house, a child’s voice recites Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” and various objects, such as toys and dolls, move about, disintegrate, and play out archetypal scenes. Like Carroll’s verse, the images are at once familiar and unfamiliar. A child’s play suit, hanging in the wardrobe, becomes the adventure’s protagonist.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Leonardo’s Diary
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 11 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- tinted b/w
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1972
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- Animated drawings inspired by Leonardo da Vinci are intercut with seemingly unrelated (but in fact strangely similar) live-action scenes.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Castle of Otrano, The
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 17 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1979
- Language:
- Czech language with optional English subtitles
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- “The Castle of Otranto” is animation/short/mockumentary based on “The Castle of Otranto”, a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole, the first Gothic novel. The novel takes place in Otranto in southern Italy. In Jan Svankmajer’s mocumentary, the amateur archaeologist Dr Vozáb has set to prove that the supernatural ghost love story takes place not in Italy but in Otranto Castle near Nachod in Czechoslovakia.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Fall of the House of Usher, The
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 15 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1980
- Language:
- Czech language with optional English subtitles
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- In this animated version of Edgar Allan Poe’s story, a traveller arrives at the Usher mansion to find that the sibling inhabitants are living under a mysterious family curse: The brother’s senses have become painfully acute, while his sister has become nearly catatonic.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Dimensions of Dialogue
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 11 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1982
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- A three-part depiction of various forms of communication.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Down to the Cellar
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Slovenská filmová tvorba Koliba
- Running Time:
- Short. 15 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1983
- Genre:
- Animation, Horror, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- A little girl goes down to the basement cellar to fetch some potatoes, and finds all her hidden fears about the cellar depicted in animated form.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Pendulum, the Pit and Hope, The
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 14 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- b/w
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1983
- Language:
- English subtitles
- Genre:
- Animation, Horror, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- 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”.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Virile Games
- Alternate Title:
- Manly Games
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 14 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1988
- Language:
- Czech language
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- 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…
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Another Kind of Love
- Alternate Title:
- Hugh Cornwall: Another Kind of Love
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Running Time:
- Short. 4 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- United Kingdom
- Year:
- 1988
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Animation, Music Video
- Notes:
- Svankmajer’s music video for Hugh Cornwell’s “Another Kind of Love.”
+ Meat Love
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 1 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1988
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- The story takes place entirely on a kitchen counter and sees two slices of raw meat as protagonists. The first slice is courted by the second and together they dance to the notes of a recording from the 1920s broadcast on the radio, after which the two slices find themselves playing and flirting on a plate full of flour, but the passion is abruptly interrupted by two skewers who fork the two slices and fry them in a pan.
+ Darkness-Light-Darkness
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 7 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1989
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- 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.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Flora
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- MTV Productions
- Running Time:
- Short. 1 minutes
- Sound:
- sound
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1989
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- The last moments of a creature made out of fruits and vegetables.
+ Death of Stalinism in Bohemia, The
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- BBC
- Running Time:
- Short. 9 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia, United Kingdom
- Year:
- 1990
- Language:
- Czech language with optional English subtitles
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- A bust of Stalin is cut open on an operating table, leading to an elaborate animated depiction of Czech history from 1948 (the Communist takeover) to 1989 (the Velvet Revolution). Some knowledge of the subject is essential in order to understand the film, which is entirely visual.
+ Food
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 17 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1992
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- BREAKFAST: After eating breakfast, a man is transformed into an elaborate dumb-waiter-style breakfast dispenser - and the same fate befalls the man who obtains breakfast from him. LUNCH: After failing to catch the waiter’s eye, two would-be diners end up eating everything within reach. DINNER: Portraits of various meals made up of human organs.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Johanes Doktor Faust
- Director:
- Radok, Emil
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 17 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1958
- Language:
- Czech language with optional English subtitles
- Genre:
- Animation, Experimental / Avant Garde
- Notes:
- The Faust legend retold with marionettes.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Nick Carter in Prague (excerpts)
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Running Time:
- Short. 5 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1977
- Language:
- Czech language
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Animation
- Notes:
- Excerpts from Nick Carter in Prague, made by Švankmajer in the 1970s while he was working in Prague as a special effects designer after having his films banned.
+ Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer, The
- Alternate Title:
- The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer Prague's Alchemist of Film
- Director:
- Quay, Stephen; Quay, Timothy; Griffiths, Keith
- Production Co:
- Atelier Koninck
- Running Time:
- Short. 54 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- United Kingdom
- Year:
- 1984
- Language:
- English language
- Genre:
- Animation, Documentary
- Notes:
- In Prague, a professorial puppet, with metal pincers for hands and an open book for a hat, takes a boy as a pupil. First, the professor empties fluff and toys from the child’s head, leaving him without the top of his head for most of the film. The professor then teaches the lad about illusions and perspectives, the pursuit of an object through exploring a bank of drawers, divining an object, and the migration of forms. The child then brings out a box with a tarantula in it: the professor puts his “hands” into the box and describes what he feels. The boy receives a final lesson about animation and film making; then the professor gives him a brain and his own open-book hat.
- Link to:
- FII catalog |
+ Chimères de Švankmajer, Les
- Director:
- Leclerc, Michel; Schmitt, Bertrand
- Running Time:
- Short. 58 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- color
- Country:
- France
- Year:
- 2001
- Language:
- French language
- Genre:
- Documentary
- Notes:
- “Les Chimères des Švankmajer” takes an in depth look at both of the Švankmajers as they work on the full length film “Little Otik”.
+ Quiet Week in the House, A
- Alternate Title:
- Tichý týden v domě
- Director:
- Švankmajer, Jan
- Production Co:
- Krátký film Praha
- Running Time:
- Short. 19 minutes
- Sound:
- sound - stereo 2.0
- Color:
- tinted b/w
- Country:
- Czechoslovakia
- Year:
- 1968
- Genre:
- Experimental / Avant Garde, Animation
- Notes:
- A man, apparently on the run, takes shelter in a dilapidated house. Every day, he drills a hole through a wall and looks into one of the rooms, each time seeing a different surreal vision…
- Link to:
- FII catalog |