In collaboration with CineCity, the Brighton Film Festival, Cambridge Arts Picturehouse is currently celebrating 50 years of filmmaking by the legendary Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer. We asked the director of Brighton based animation studio Dolphin Burger Studios to take us through some of his favourites from CineCity’s Švankmajer short screenings.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrgOnL1Yyvk
PICNIC WITH WEISSMANN (1968)

Inanimate objects enjoy an animated picnic; a shovel digs for no apparent initial reason.  Old vinyl LPs scratch reluctantly from their sleeves to the gramophone.  Sepia-toned vintage postcards get individual extreme close-ups.  Is it hypnotic, or is it repetitive?  The shock ending is a double treat, with its dark humour, and the fact that it heralds the end of the eerie nightmare presented by the film.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AY22gQzSpI
A QUIET WEEK IN THE HOUSE (1969)

This surreal (is that word redundant or significant when describing Švankmajer?) little piece brought us a mysterious secret agent, charged with staking out a strange room, drilling a new hole in the wall every day to peer into it, and watch madness unfold.  This was notable for breaking slightly from Švankmajer’s signature jerky stop-motion.  A slightly different style was used, making the animation even more fluid, in the way that a lamp-post might move smoothly as you pass out next to it after drinking too much wine.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH-Y_fVjzE4
DON JUAN (1969)

A tale of lust and bloodlust, told with a strange mixture of marionettes, and human-marionette hybrids.  The exaggerated, emphatic movement of the actors is reminiscent of The Banana Splits of the 1960s.  Švankmajer’s take on Molière’s play “Don Juan, or The Feast with the Statue” is brutal and funny, like a slightly less Reduced Shakespeare Company.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYOyvg5t7qI
THE OSSUARY (1970)

There is not a great deal to be said for this, an example of the kind of film to which people refer, when they criticise the art house genre. An ossuary is a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains.  We get the rare opportunity to browse one in monochrome, for a seemingly (at the time) endless period, while dischordant choral music simulataneously chastises and undermines us.  Look out for an upcoming remake starring Jack Black.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDog7avZN9k
JABBERWOCKY (1971)

After leaving the cinema I felt cheated as I hadn’t seen the Jabberwocky short.  Or so I thought.  This is a far cry from Terry Gilliam’s take on Lewis Carroll’s famous poem, dealing from a distance it seemed, with the political undertones and overtones Švankmajer inferred.  There is a recurring motif of a cat knocking down some building blocks, that had my entire row jumping a foot every time.  Priceless.

Click here to book tickets for the Švankmajer season at Cambridge Arts Picturehouse.