Jan Švankmajer — Playwright (21)
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Leonardo's Diary (1972) WikiData IMDb TMDB
Leonardův deník 72
director: Jan Švankmajer
other title: Il diario di Leonardo / El diario de Leonardo …
Animated drawings inspired by Leonardo da Vinci are intercut with seemingly unrelated (but in fact strangely similar) live-action scenes.
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Movie

Don Juan (1969) WikiData IMDb TMDB
Don Šajn
director: Jan Švankmajer actor: František Filipovský / Vítězslav Kuschmitz …
other title: Don Šajn
The age-old story of Don Juan, played by giant puppets.
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Movie

A Quiet Week in the House (1969) WikiData IMDb TMDB
Tichý týden v domě
director: Jan Švankmajer actor: Václav Borovička
other title: Una tranquilla settimana in casa / Una tranquila semana en casa …
A man, apparently on the run, takes shelter in a dilapidated house. Every day, he drills a hole through a wall and looks into one of the rooms, each time seeing a different surreal vision.
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Movie

The Garden (1968) WikiData IMDb TMDB
Zahrada
director: Jan Švankmajer actor: Jiří Hálek / Luděk Kopřiva …
other title: Il giardino / El jardín …
Frank visits his friend Josef, who introduces him to his pedigree rabbits and his wife Mary. Frank is more interested in the slightly unsettling fact that Josef and Mary's garden fence is entirely made up of living people holding hands.
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The Ossuary (1970) WikiData IMDb TMDB
Kostnice
director: Jan Švankmajer
other title: L'ossario / El osario …
A non-narrative voyage round Sedlec Ossuary, which has been constructed from over 50,000 human skeletons (victims of the Black Death).
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Movie

Darkness, Light, Darkness (1989) WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
Tma, světlo, tma
director: Jan Švankmajer
other title: Oscurità-luce-oscurità / Oscuridad / Luz / Oscuridad …
A human body gradually reconstructs itself as its various component parts crowd themselves into a small room and eventually, after much experimentation, sort out which part goes where.
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Insect (2018)
Hmyz
director: Jan Švankmajer actor: Jan Budař / Jiří Lábus …
other title: Hmyz / Insects
The Dung Beetle is late, the Parasite is asleep and Mrs Larva is more interested in her knitting than the director’s instructions. It’s clear: this amateur theatre company has a long way to go before they can perform their version of "The Insect Play", a famous satirical work from 1922 by the brothers Karel and Josef Čapek which features insects with decidedly human traits: greed, egocentrism, jealousy.
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Faust (1994)
Lekce Faust
director: Jan Švankmajer actor: Petr Čepek / Jan Kraus …
other title: La Leçon Faust / Fausto …
A very free adaptation of Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", Goethe's "Faust" and various other treatments of the old legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil. A nondescript man is lured by a strange map into a sinister puppet theatre, where he finds himself immersed in an indescribably weird version of the play, blending live actors, clay animation and giant puppets.
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Alice (1988)
Něco z Alenky
★ 8.1 (8 ratings) director: Jan Švankmajer actor: Kristýna Kohoutová
other title: A Viagem de Alice / Něco z Alenky …
A quiet young English girl named Alice finds herself in an alternate version of her own reality after chasing a white rabbit. She becomes surrounded by living inanimate objects and stuffed dead animals, and must find a way out of this nightmare — no matter how twisted or odd that way must be. A memorably bizarre screen version of Lewis Carroll’s novel ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’.
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Little Otik (2001)
Otesánek
director: Jan Švankmajer actor: Veronika Žilková / Jan Hartl …
other title: Il piccolo Otik / Otésanek - Little Otik …
When a childless couple learn that they cannot have children, it causes great distress. To ease his wife's pain, the man finds a piece of root in the backyard and chops it and varnishes it into the shape of a child. However the woman takes the root as her baby and starts to pretend that it is real.
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Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)
Spiklenci slasti
★ 9.0 (5 ratings) director: Jan Švankmajer actor: Petr Meissel / Gabriela Wilhelmová …
other title: Les conspirateurs du plaisir / Los conspiradores del placer …
Six outwardly average individuals have elaborate fetishes they indulge with surreptitious care. A mousy letter carrier makes dough balls she grotesquely ingests before bed. A shop clerk fixates on a TV news reader while he builds a machine to massage and masturbate him. One of his customers makes an elaborate chicken costume for a voodoo-like scene with a doll resembling his plump neighbor. She, in turn, has a doll that resembles him, which she whips and dominates in an abandoned church. The TV news reader has her own fantasy involving carp. Her husband, who is indifferent to her, steals materials to fashion elaborate artifacts that he rubs, scrapes and rolls across his body.
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Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) (2010) WikiData IMDb Douban NeoDB
Přežít svůj život
director: Jan Švankmajer actor: Václav Helšus / Klára Issová …
other title: Surviving Life (Theory and practice) / Sobrevivir a la vida …
Eugene, an aging man, leads a double life - one real, the other in his dreams. He goes to see a psychoanalyst, who tries to interpret the meaning of his dreams. Eugene finds a way of entering his dream-world at will and finds out about his childhood and what really happened to his parents.
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Down to the Cellar (1983) WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
Do pivnice
director: Jan Švankmajer actor: Oľga Vronská / Alexander Letko …
other title: En el sótano / Do pivnice
A little girl goes down to the basement cellar to fetch some potatoes, and finds all her hidden fears about the cellar depicted in animated form.
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The Pit, the Pendulum and Hope (1983) WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
Kyvadlo, jáma a naděje
director: Jan Švankmajer actor: Jan Žáček
other title: El péndulo, el pozo y la esperanza / Kyvadlo, jáma a naděje
Animated short film based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" and Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's "A Torture by Hope".