Jan Svankmajer
About
Biography
Filmography
Family & Companions
Biography
Jan Svankmajer is a major figure of contemporary East European animation whose surrealistic, often macabre work owes more to the nightmarish visions of Kafka and Bunuel than to the sunny daydreams of Walt Disney and his creative progeny. Noted for investing otherwise ordinary objects with ominous overtones, Svankmajer reached his widest audience to date with a feature-length adaptation of Lewis Carroll's "Alice" (1988) which blended animated and live-action footage--a technique he had earlier used to hair-raising effect in "Down to the Cellar" (1983). He is a major influence on the somewhat better known animation artists, The Brothers Quay, as evinced by their 1984 tribute, "The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer."
Filmography
Director (Feature Film)
Writer (Feature Film)
Producer (Feature Film)
Editing (Feature Film)
Art Director (Feature Film)
Costume-Wardrobe (Feature Film)
Visual Effects (Feature Film)
Art Department (Feature Film)
Production Designer (Feature Film)
Misc. Crew (Feature Film)
Misc. Crew (Special)
Life Events
1958
Worked as a theatre director; associated with the Theatre of Masks and the Black Theatre; entered Lanterna Magika Theatre in Prague, where he first encountered filmmaking
1961
Exhibited art work alongside his wife's paintings in Semafor Theater in Prague
1963
Work exhibited at the Viola Theatre
1964
Made first film, the 12-minute short, "Posledn Trik Pana Schwarcewalldea a Pana Edgara/The Last Trick"
1974
Began a series of experiments on the relations between touch and vision; produced "touch objects"
1977
Exhibited at the Sonnenring Gallery in Munster, West Germany
1982
Helmed the short "Dimensions of Dialogue"
1988
Made first feature film, "Alice" (served as art director, director, screenwriter, editor, producer)
1994
Directed the animated fantasy "Faust"
1996
Helmed the feature "Conspirators of Pleasure"
2006
Helmed "Lunacy," a surreal comic horror based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade
Companions
