LIGHTSTRUCK, the Los Angeles experimental film series run by curators Zena Grey and Mark Toscano, opens “The Alchemical Furnace of Jan Švankmajer” tonight, a retrospective of every short film by the famous Czech surrealist, over four Thursday evenings at 2220 Arts + Archives.
The series was organized with Švankmajer’s studio, Athanor, and according to the organizers, it marks the first time all of his shorts will screen in Los Angeles. The prints are recent remasters that Švankmajer oversaw himself; each program mixes what LIGHTSTRUCK calls “iconic classics and remarkable obscurities.”
Born in Prague in 1934, Švankmajer made his first film, The Last Trick, in 1964; his work combines stop-motion, puppetry and collage. He joined the Czechoslovak surrealist group in 1970 with his wife, the painter Eva Švankmajerová, and was soon banned from filmmaking from 1972 to 1979.
His 1982 short Dimensions of Dialogue won the Golden Bear at the 1983 Berlinale and the Grand Prix at Annecy. His features include Alice (1988), Faust (1994), Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), Little Otik (2000), Lunacy (2005), Surviving Life (2010) and Insects (2018); the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival gave him its Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema in 2009.
The Brothers Quay, Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton and Henry Selick are among the filmmakers who have noted his influence in their work. LIGHTSTRUCK’s own notes call him “one of the single most influential and idiosyncratic artists in animation and cinema history.”
For each program, the doors open at 7:30 p.m. with the show beginning at 8 p.m. at 2220 Arts + Archives, 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. The four programs are as follows:
- Program One, October 1: Animated Self-Portrait (1989), J.S. Bach — Fantasia in G Minor (1965), Historia Naturae (Suita) (1967), The Flat (1968), Jabberwocky (1971), The Fall of the House of Usher (1980) and Down to the Cellar (1983).
- Program Two, October 22: The Last Trick (1964), Et Cetera (1967), The Ossuary (1970), A Quiet Week in the House (1969), Food (1992) and The Pendulum, the Pit, and Hope (1983).
- Program Three, October 29: Picnic with Weissmann (1969), Don Juan (1969), Game with Stones (1965), Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), Meat Love (1989) and Virile Games (1988).
- Program Four, November 12: Another Kind of Love (1988), Punch and Judy (1966), The Garden (1968), Flora (1989), Leonardo’s Diary (1972), The Castle of Otranto (1977), The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (1990) and Darkness, Light, Darkness (1989).
Tickets for each program are sold separately through LIGHTSTRUCK’s site.
Source: LIGHTSTRUCK
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
