The Insects
Director: Jan Svankmajer // Writer: Jan Svankmajer
Earlier this year it was announced that legendary Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer, at the age of 79, was working on a new project, his first since 2010’s Surviving Life (Theory and Practice). Known for his combination of live action and animation, famously in his 1988 version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and more recently in masterworks like Little Otik (2000) and Lunacy (2005), Svankmajer returns to classic literature for the inspiration of his latest, The Insects. Previously taking pages from Goethe (Lesson Faust, 1994) and Poe (Lunacy), Svankmajer is loosely basing his latest on a 1922 play from the Capek Brothers, From the Life of Insects, combined with Kafka’s The Metamorphoses. Six amateur thespians meet in a pub to rehearse the Čapeks’ play, while their personal stories interweave with those of the characters they are about to play. The play is intended as a backdrop in which...
Director: Jan Svankmajer // Writer: Jan Svankmajer
Earlier this year it was announced that legendary Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer, at the age of 79, was working on a new project, his first since 2010’s Surviving Life (Theory and Practice). Known for his combination of live action and animation, famously in his 1988 version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and more recently in masterworks like Little Otik (2000) and Lunacy (2005), Svankmajer returns to classic literature for the inspiration of his latest, The Insects. Previously taking pages from Goethe (Lesson Faust, 1994) and Poe (Lunacy), Svankmajer is loosely basing his latest on a 1922 play from the Capek Brothers, From the Life of Insects, combined with Kafka’s The Metamorphoses. Six amateur thespians meet in a pub to rehearse the Čapeks’ play, while their personal stories interweave with those of the characters they are about to play. The play is intended as a backdrop in which...
- 1/8/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Crazy in Love: Anderson’s Gothic Sprinkled Romance Deserves to be Tarred and Feathered
Fresh off the surprise box office success of 2013’s Halle Berry headlined The Call, director Brad Anderson returns to the creepy confines of the mental ward with Stonehearst Asylum, reminiscent of his well received 2001 film, Session 9. Assembling another terrific cast for this period piece, those familiar with a fine tradition of Gothic cinema will immediately begin to pick up on the threads of Edgar Allan Poe that inspired the macabre switcheroo generating the dramatic conflict. But even before we get to that point, Anderson’s latest arrives Doa, a cold, tepid turkey that isn’t ever sure of the mood it wishes to generate. Scenes fluctuate rapidly, and we’re left to decide whether this is supposed to be a prim and proper brooding romance of stiff corsets and constricted consecrations, a downright queasy...
Fresh off the surprise box office success of 2013’s Halle Berry headlined The Call, director Brad Anderson returns to the creepy confines of the mental ward with Stonehearst Asylum, reminiscent of his well received 2001 film, Session 9. Assembling another terrific cast for this period piece, those familiar with a fine tradition of Gothic cinema will immediately begin to pick up on the threads of Edgar Allan Poe that inspired the macabre switcheroo generating the dramatic conflict. But even before we get to that point, Anderson’s latest arrives Doa, a cold, tepid turkey that isn’t ever sure of the mood it wishes to generate. Scenes fluctuate rapidly, and we’re left to decide whether this is supposed to be a prim and proper brooding romance of stiff corsets and constricted consecrations, a downright queasy...
- 10/23/2014
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Above: Eva Švankmajerová’s poster for Alice (Jan Švankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1988).
The adage that behind every great man stands a great woman was rarely truer than in the case of the incomparable Czech animator/filmmaker Jan Švankmajer and his wife, the painter, ceramicist and writer Eva Švankmajerová (1940-2005). Eva Dvoráková met Švankmajer when she was 20 (he was 26 and working in experimental theater) and just out of college (she had studied drama at the music academy of Prague), married him the following year and for the next 45 years they were inseparable artistic collaborators. The director of a 2001 documentary about the Švankmajers, entitled Les chimères des Svankmajer, has said “The more I worked with Jan, the more I realised that the influence of Eva was essential. Their whole life is dedicated to their work, which takes on gigantic proportions, without separation.” (You can see Eva at work in this trailer for the film.
The adage that behind every great man stands a great woman was rarely truer than in the case of the incomparable Czech animator/filmmaker Jan Švankmajer and his wife, the painter, ceramicist and writer Eva Švankmajerová (1940-2005). Eva Dvoráková met Švankmajer when she was 20 (he was 26 and working in experimental theater) and just out of college (she had studied drama at the music academy of Prague), married him the following year and for the next 45 years they were inseparable artistic collaborators. The director of a 2001 documentary about the Švankmajers, entitled Les chimères des Svankmajer, has said “The more I worked with Jan, the more I realised that the influence of Eva was essential. Their whole life is dedicated to their work, which takes on gigantic proportions, without separation.” (You can see Eva at work in this trailer for the film.
- 11/9/2013
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
As of now, Kate Beckinsale isn’t brining Selene back for another round of vampire-werewolf wars, but she is in talks for a new film from The Call’s Brad Anderson.
The actress is reported to be negotiating a starring role in Eliza Graves, a psych-thriller based on Edgar Allan Poe’s early work, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.
“Beckinsale will play the title character of Eliza, a patient at a mental institution in which the inmates have taken over and are posing as doctors. She becomes the object of affection of a newly arrived Harvard Medical School grad who has no idea of the topsy-turvy world he just entered,” The Hollywood Reporter said.
This is not the first time The System of Doctor Tarr has been adapted for the screen. S.F. Brownrigg’s The Forgotten, Juan López Moctezum’s The Mansion of Madness, and surrealist Jan Švankmajer’s film Lunacy,...
The actress is reported to be negotiating a starring role in Eliza Graves, a psych-thriller based on Edgar Allan Poe’s early work, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.
“Beckinsale will play the title character of Eliza, a patient at a mental institution in which the inmates have taken over and are posing as doctors. She becomes the object of affection of a newly arrived Harvard Medical School grad who has no idea of the topsy-turvy world he just entered,” The Hollywood Reporter said.
This is not the first time The System of Doctor Tarr has been adapted for the screen. S.F. Brownrigg’s The Forgotten, Juan López Moctezum’s The Mansion of Madness, and surrealist Jan Švankmajer’s film Lunacy,...
- 3/18/2013
- by Sara Castillo
- FEARnet
Jan Švankmajer seems to have entered that slightly awkward phase of the arthouse auteur's career where he's apt to be underappreciated. The critics have already said all the obvious things about him, he's had a few films place in pantheonic positions of a kind (Dimensions of Dialogue, Alice), and so we're ready to allow the dust to gather on his legacy. Yet the Great Man remains obstinately and inconveniently alive, and still making films.
His latest, Surviving Life (Theory and Practice), is doing the festival rounds, while its immediate predecessor, Lunacy (2005), has faded into the obscurity of the recent-but-not-current. I'm as guilty as anyone of this neglect: I didn't see Lunacy when it came out. preferring to wait for DVD release. I admit to being less than enamored with Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), although I quite liked Little Otik (2000), and even participated in a TV play somewhat influenced by it. Needless to say,...
His latest, Surviving Life (Theory and Practice), is doing the festival rounds, while its immediate predecessor, Lunacy (2005), has faded into the obscurity of the recent-but-not-current. I'm as guilty as anyone of this neglect: I didn't see Lunacy when it came out. preferring to wait for DVD release. I admit to being less than enamored with Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), although I quite liked Little Otik (2000), and even participated in a TV play somewhat influenced by it. Needless to say,...
- 10/28/2010
- MUBI
The 9th annual Lausanne Underground Film Festival may just run for a mere five days in Switzerland on Oct. 20-24, but it hits with the force of a 10p-ton megaton bomb over that time period, packing in so much mind-boggling underground madness it’ll make your head explode.
Every year, the fest feels like 5 or 6 festivals crammed into one. There’s the fest that pays homage to the history of experimental filmmaking, there are the retrospectives of several cult festivals, a feature film competition section, a short film competition section and more.
Three filmmakers are especially getting major retrospective love this year. First, there’s legendary Canadian experimental filmmaker Michael Snow who will be in attendance at screenings of his classic films Wavelength, <–> and La région centrale, plus several of his other short films.
Also being feted are German extreme horror filmmaker Jörg Buttgereit, who will attend screenings of his classic Nekromantik,...
Every year, the fest feels like 5 or 6 festivals crammed into one. There’s the fest that pays homage to the history of experimental filmmaking, there are the retrospectives of several cult festivals, a feature film competition section, a short film competition section and more.
Three filmmakers are especially getting major retrospective love this year. First, there’s legendary Canadian experimental filmmaker Michael Snow who will be in attendance at screenings of his classic films Wavelength, <–> and La région centrale, plus several of his other short films.
Also being feted are German extreme horror filmmaker Jörg Buttgereit, who will attend screenings of his classic Nekromantik,...
- 10/18/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
My first exposure to the work of legendary director Jan Svankmajer was his strangely creepy 2000 comedy “Little Otik”, which tells the sensitive story of a childless couple and their relationship with a peculiar root baby. That’s right — a root baby. Since then, I’ve consumed as much of the man’s output as I possibly could, including the man’s underrated 2005 endeavor “Lunacy”. Much to my giddy delight, Twitch has kindly posted the trailer for the filmmaker’s latest effort, the suitably bizarre “Surviving Life”. If you’ve never seen anything by Svankmajer, you might be a little perplexed by this clip, and that’s okay. We pass no judgments here at Beyond Hollywood. Not openly, anyway. Here’s a synopsis to clarify things: Eugene (Václav Helsus) leads a double life – married to Milada, he also dreams of the beautiful Evgenia (Klára Issová). Seeking to perpetuate his dream life,...
- 9/13/2010
- by Todd Rigney
- Beyond Hollywood
Having examined the American fright features populating the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival’s Midnight collection, it’s high time to look at a pair of European genre movies playing the event. One of them is actually part of the Spotlight section instead, as Lunacy's Czech writer/director Jan Svankmajer, at age 71, now qualifies as a Grand Old Man of oddball cinema as opposed to the young turks populating the Midnight realm. And despite its title, Lunacy may be the least “mad” of Svankmajer’s features, committing (pardon the pun) to a straightforward story interspersed with the filmmaker’s traditional surreal stop-motion animation. In an onscreen introduction, the filmmaker describes his latest work as “a horror film, with all the degeneracy of the genre,” and is interrupted by a fleshy animated tongue skittering past his feet. That’s a sign of things to come, as the stop-motion isn’t nearly as...
- 4/21/2009
- Fangoria
- As committees from each individual country select their respective submissions for the Best Foreign Picture Academy Award derby, folks like myself have the arduous task of trying to keep score. Without a doubt the early favorite is Germanyâ.s selection which has already picked up seven German Film Awards this year. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's directorial debut takes place in East Berlin, November 1984. Five years before its downfall, the former East-German government ensured its claim to power with a ruthless system of control and surveillance. Party-loyalist Captain Gerd Wiesler hopes to boost his career when given the job of collecting evidence against the playwright Georg Dreyman and his girlfriend, the celebrated theater actress Christa-Maria Sieland. Sony Pictures Classics will release The Lives of Others early next year, though it could be challenged for the Foreign Oscar category by another Spc pic â. Pedroâ.s Volver. Also let
- 10/20/2006
- IONCINEMA.com
- Lunacy Czech madman and stop-motion guru Jan Svankmajer (Alice, Little Otik) returns with his latest bastard child, Lunacy. The plot concerns a nomad who may or may not be suffering delusions of paranoia. Taken in by a mysterious benefactor, he is led through a series of increasingly bizarre circumstances that ultimately question the degree of his own sanity and that of those around him. To introduce the film’s themes, Svankmajer himself appears onscreen to state that there are two competing ways in which to deal with psychosis - tolerance or punishment. Is he talking about Lunacy’s characters who all seem to be suffering from (or perhaps been set free by) some degree of madness or is he slyly referring to larger moral issues? Chock full of symbolism, Lunacy alternates between literal interludes of stop-motion slabs of meat that seem to be indulging in their own dementia and
- 7/24/2006
- IONCINEMA.com
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