BrotfabrikKino:
 Cabinet of Curiosities – in the world of Jan Švankmajer

Born in Prague on September 4, 1934, Jan Švankmajer is one of the great mavericks of European cinema. His complex work cannot be reduced to cinematic aspects alone. A collector, duplicator, author, tinkerer, visual artist, among other things, he has also created some of the most groundbreaking animated films of the 20th and 21st centuries. This list, however, can only outline a fraction of his activities and their significance. He was one of the artists who, until August 21, 1968, sought and found a connection to global art through individual and group activities in Czechoslovakia. In its special Czech form, the surrealist movement, which experienced its first heyday in the late 1920s and was recognized as such by André Breton himself, played a special role. Despite Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia from 1938 and the brutal Stalinist phase from 1948, the movement never came to a complete standstill. When the cultural and political climate relaxed after Stalin's death in 1953, there was a new renaissance. Jan Švankmajer and his wife—the painter, poet, ceramist, author, and stage designer Eva Švankmajerová (1940–2005)—played a key role as part of an immensely creative and courageous group, whose activities were in no way compatible with the maxims of socialist realism. Švankmajer's short and feature-length films were always statements of civil courage. Their highly artificial execution cannot be viewed apart from their sometimes subtle, sometimes explicit political context.

Although the current retrospective, which encompasses restored digital versions of the films, is not complete, it offers the first opportunity in a long time to experience significant parts of Švankmajer's oeuvre on the big screen. It is made up of seven feature-length programs, including four blocks comprising a total of 19 shorts as well as NĚCO Z ALENKY (Alice, ČSSR/CH/UK/FRG 1987) and HMYZ (Insects, CZ 2018). A special highlight will be the screening of the nearly hour-long work KUNSTKAMERA (CZ 2022), which Švankmajer himself declared his last film—but given his ongoing creativity, this should not be taken too seriously.

Jan Švankmajer, who has a “humble background,” seems to a natural affinity for the tactile aspects of everyday objects. His mother was a seamstress and his father a window dresser. As a child, he played with a puppet theater that his father had built and soon began making figures and stage sets himself. Ever since, puppets have populated his oeuvre—they function as objects endowed with a life of their own, as accumulators and allegories of the human condition, but also as inhabitants of mythical parallel worlds. From 1950, Švankmajer studied scenography and puppetry. In 1957, he staged his first production - a folk theater version of Don Juan, which he adapted for the screen in 1970 (DON ŠAJN, ČSSR 1970). In 1958, he began working with the legendary director Emil Radok (co-founder of the Laterna Magica theater in Prague), which greatly expanded his aesthetic and technical range. In 1964, he made his first independent short film, POSLEDNÍ TRIK PANA SCHWARZEWALDEA A PANA EDGARA (The Last Trick, ČSSR 1964). The twelve-minute work contained many stylistic devices that would later become his trademarks: the mixture of real and animated scenes, the interaction of actors with puppets, the collage-like sound, and the animation of historical artifacts. The fruitful, early phase of his career lasted until August 1968. It was the short films created during this period, such as the proto-video clip JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: FANTASIA IN G MINOR (ČSSR 1965) and the famous HRA S KAMENY (A Game with Stones, ČSSR 1965), but above all the pessimistic declaration of love for the animal world HISTORIA NATURAE (ČSSR 1967), which established Švankmajer's international reputation as a brilliant tinkerer, maverick, and universal genius.

Since Švankmajer had signed the “The Two Thousand Words" manifesto in the midst of the Prague Spring, it was almost inevitable that he would eventually be banned from making films and this was the case between 1972 and 1979. Unable to direct, he kept his head above water by producing animated sequences for state-funded feature films. Otherwise, he devoted himself to his wide-ranging creative activities and began collecting artifacts of art history. The Švankmajers' apartment in Prague and later their mannerist castle in Horní Staňkov (southern Bohemia) became refuges for dissidents who were dispersed around the country and the resurgent surrealist movement in Czechia. After a compilation of his early works was shown at the Annecy Animation Film Festival in 1983, Švankmajer's international fame grew. Terry Gilliam, Henry Sellick, Tim Burton, and the Canadian Quay brothers recognized in him a kindred spirit and contributed significantly to the dissemination of his work in the West.

When the communist systems of Central and Eastern Europe collapsed, Švankmajer commented on the historic events with a sarcastic short film called KONEC STALINISMU V ČECHACH (The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia, (CZ 1990) – a pointed reckoning with the crimes committed between 1948 and 1989 under the guise of cynically propagated salvation of humanity. 

Since then, Švankmajer has only produced feature-length films with animated sequences, which have only been included in the regular programs of Western European cinemas on special occasions. The medium-length KUNSTKAMERA (see above), which was completed in 2022 and shot, as always, in collaboration with producer Jaromír Kallista, comes as a big surprise. To the sounds of Vivaldi's Spring, viewers are given access to the director's home and workplace in South Bohemia. In long sequence shots, the winding rooms of the building reveal themselves and a whole universe of fascinating, bizarre, or beautiful found items and collector objects as well as artworks. It is virtually impossible to even begin to comprehend the wealth of objects of art and cultural history accumulated here.  Elegant porcelain figurines stand next to ethnological artifacts, and in between them are dolls and puppets of all kinds—on strings and sticks, made of fabric, wood and metal, with hidden clockworks and chimes, Indonesian shadow puppets, Bohemian marionettes, Punch, devils, angels. But the rooms, stairwells, and suites offer much more. Large-format paintings hang on the walls, prints and drawings spill out of drawers. This film gives us the extraordinary privilege of sharing in Švankmajer's artistic legacy. For him, collecting is part of the creative process. In an interview, he once confessed: “I collect relics of the magical world that once prevailed and corresponded far more to human mentality than the current state of affairs.” Thus, this work brings several circles full circle. The displayed objects refer, for their part, to Švankmajer's classic short films, such as PICKNICK MIT WEISMANN (Austria 1968) and KOSTNICE (Ossuary, ČSSR 1970), which bring seemingly lifeless objects to life in an eerie way. And the director also points to the inspiration of spaces, in which we are only temporary guests that – as in BYT (The Flat, ČSSR 1968) – is a central topos of his work. (Claus Löser)

Thank you Jan Švankmajer, Pavla Kallistová (Athanor Film Production Praha and Slaný) as well as Pavel Horáček (Anifilm Praha) for the cooperation and practical help.

At BrotfabrikKino, Caligariplatz 1, Berlin-Weißensee