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Biography
One of the great Czech filmmakers, Jan Svankmajer was born in 1934 in Prague where he still lives. He trained at the Institute of Applied Arts from 1950 to 1954 and then at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts (Department of Puppetry). He soon became involved in the Theatre of Masks and the famous Black Theatre, before entering the Laterna Magika Puppet Theatre where he first encountered film. In 1970 he met his wife, the surrealist painter Eva Svankmajerova, and the late Vratislav Effenberger, the leading theoretician of the Czech Surrealist Group, which Svankmajer joined and of which he still remains a member.
Svankmajer made his first film in 1964 and for over
thirty years has made some of the most memorable and
unique animated films ever made, gaining a reputation
as one of the world’s foremost animators, and
influencing filmmakers from Tim Burton to The Brothers
Quay. His brilliant use of claymation reached its
apotheosis with the stunning 1982 film DIMENSIONS
OF DIALOGUE. In 1987 Svankmajer completed his first
feature film, ALICE, a characteristically witty and
subversive adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, and
with the ensuing feature films FAUST,
CONSPIRATORS
OF PLEASURE and his newest film LITTLE
OTIK (OTESÁNEK) Svankmajer has moved further away
from his roots in animation towards live-action filmmaking,
though his vision remains as strikingly surreal and
uncannily inventive as ever.
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