Jan Schwankmeier is a representative of experimental cinema. In addition, he creates sculptures, tactile poems, collages. For those who are not familiar with the director’s works, it is worth noting that his work is extremely specific. He successfully combines animation with feature films, filling stories with his meaning.
From the article you can find out who helped him in making films, as well as get acquainted with the filmography of the director.
short biography
Jan Schwankmeier was born on 09/04/1934 in Prague. He is known as a Czech film director, as well as a screenwriter, animator, sculptor, artist.
He began his career in 1950, when he studied at the Institute of Applied Arts. After he continued his studies at the Academy of Arts (Prague), choosing the specialization "puppetry".
He is a representative of experimental cinema. The direction of work is surreal. Each picture of the director became an event in the light of animated films.
Personal life
Jan Schwankmeier was married once. His wife Eva was six years younger than her husband. She died in 2005. Being a surrealist artist, Eve took an active part in the cinematic activities of her husband. She was a designer and assistant director. In Soviet times, the couple secretly was in an underground group of surrealists.
Two children were born in the family. Their son, Wenceslas (10/17/1975), works as an animator and artist.
Studio work and central themes in creativity
In 1983, Jan Schwankmeier founded his own studio together with producer Jaromir Kallista, who was an associate of the director. They planned to create non-profit films.
The building is located twenty-five kilometers from Prague in the town of Knovyz, which is not far from Slany.
Jan Schwankmeier, whose full filmography consists of six full-length films and twenty-eight short films, has its own unsurpassed style. In short films, he mixed plasticine animation with hyperrealism. His works have a great influence on the work of many cinema geniuses.
Central themes in the work:
- fear;
- external manipulation;
- fear of confined space.
Many critics believe that this is due to the personal phobias of the creator, as well as to life in socialist Czechoslovakia.
Filmography
Jan Schwankmeier, whose filmography is presented in the article, shot his first film in 1958. For his creative career, he was able to earn a reputation as an advanced animator of our time. After his first work in the movie, he created short films for almost nineteen years, until he switched to full-length cinema.
List of some short films:
- "Dr. Johann Faust" (1958);
- "Game with stones" (1965);
- Punch and Judy (1966);
- "Garden", "Apartment" (1968);
- Don Giovanni (1969);
- The Ossuary (1970);
- The Fall of the Asher House (1980);
- “Meat Love” (1988);
- “Food” (1992).
Of all the full-length paintings, I especially want to single out three works that should be considered in more detail.
Alice (1988)
Schwankmeier Jan created his paintings in a surreal style. The same applies to Alice. The film is still considered the most insane version of the work of Lewis Carroll. The picture with elements of animation and feature films is rather cruel and gloomy. It can hardly be called a girl’s fairy dream - it is rather a painful hallucination.
From the book, the director took only the plot when the girl chases the White Rabbit and ends up in a wonderful world. When Alice violates the laws of this world that she does not understand, she returns to reality. The main part of the picture is the journey of the heroine. Only the world does not look like a fairy tale, but resembles a hell with dark shades and terrible animals.
The heroine is transformed into a doll several times during the film, and then again becomes an ordinary girl. The director removed several heroes that were not important for his idea, for example, the Duchess and the Cheshire Cat. And at the end of the film, the trial is not over Jack, but over the heroine. Since the director called the girl Alenka, the film is often called "Alenka's Dream."
The Lesson of Faust (1994)
Schwankmeier Jan could not help creating a film about a poor doctor who sells his soul to Satan. The director puts the hero in Prague. There, the doctor finds a puppet show and Goethe's book in the attic. He tries on the costume of Faust and suddenly appears in the laboratory of an alchemist.
The author of the picture combines the game of live actors using puppets and animation. He reveals the essence of the neighborhood with the satanic world. The Faust of the Czech creator is deceived in his dream of Margarita, who turns out to be a wooden doll, and perishes under the wheels of a car that no one drives. The horror is that Satan has no guise.
Schwankmeier took the music of Johann Bach for his film. He also supplemented the picture with references to ancient plays about Dr. Faust.
The work received six awards at various festivals in the nominations "Best Film", "Best Actor".
“Sleepwalking” (2005)
Jan Schwankmeier, whose filmography and biography are considered in the article, created a horror film. As a basis, he took the work of Edgar Allan Poe entitled "Premature Burial", supplementing it with references to the Marquis de Sade.
The plot takes place in France, where a young man after the funeral of his mother sees the same dream. It all starts with a knock on the door, which the hero’s towel and linen hasten to open. As a result, orderlies burst into him, put him in a straitjacket. The hero, resisting, destroys everything in the room.
Once, from a nightmare, an elderly man wakes him up, who turns out to be the Marquis. So a young man gets acquainted with his castle and those orgies that are held in it. The Marquis decides that he will be able to get rid of the attacks that happen to him if he is buried alive. With a young man after a similar procedure, there was a breakdown with terrible knowledge. The Marquis advises the hero to be treated in a hospital for the mentally ill. The director of this hospital was a friend of the Marquise and a member of their orgy.
In the hospital, the hero meets a worker Charlotte, who says that the real director of the hospital and his staff are imprisoned in the basement. And he organized all the Marquis with the help of the insurrection of the insane. The hero decides to help Charlotte and frees the captives, who from a long imprisonment have lost their human appearance and overgrown with chicken feathers.
The real director takes revenge on his offenders, and the hero finds out that his method of treatment consists in terrible and cruel tortures and bullying of patients, who was the Marquis and his friends. Charlotte is the mistress of a sadistic doctor, and the hero falls into his terrible dream with the orderlies in reality. The director shows the bullying of patients through animation on parts of live meat.
