CZECH HYBRID OF BUÑUEL AND DISNEY 1
In brief: Once the Czech filmmaker Milos Forman created an interesting definition: if we added Walt Disney to Luis Buñuel, we would receive Jan Švankmajer. When Švankmajer speaks about his artistic authorities, he does not mention Disney, of course. He was rather inspired by Federic Fellini, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud or, which is equally important, by the whole crowd of surrealists, first of all by the French poet André Breton and German artist Max Ernst.
Today the 77-year-old Švankmajer lives out his second youth. The exhibition dedicated to surrealistic works was opened in the gallery of Prague Town Hall recently, and the exposition of legendary and unseen works of the “father, son and the holy ghost” of Czech surrealistic cinema is presented in it. Moreover, Švankmajer has already started the preparation work for his new film “Hmyz” (“Bugs”). The film created according to the allegorical satire “From Life of Bugs” of other Czech classics, brothers Karel and Jozef Čapek should reach cinemas at the beginning of 2015.
The monologue of Jan Švankmajer about the past, present time and future, art, creation and society is presented in the article.