Jan Švankmajer

He is well known for his stop motion films, which he often created very surreal, controversial and sometimes quite scary. Jan Švankmajer is a Czech animator, who gained international renown in 1983. He still continues to make films in Prague. In his films he uses different objects, but mainly clay. However food is his favorite subject and medium. To make the video more effective, scary, he exaggerates the sound. Stop-motion features in most of his work, though recently his feature films have included much more live action sequences than animation.

Many of his movies, like the short film ‘Down to the Cellar’ are made from a child's perspective, while at the same time often having a truly disturbing and even aggressive nature.

Today Švankmajer is one of the most celebrated animators in the world. Among his best known works are the feature films ‘Alice’ (1988), ‘Faust’ (1994), Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), ‘Little Otik’ (2000) and ‘Lunacy’ (2005), a surreal comic horror based on two works of Edgar Allan Poe and the life of Marquis de Sade.