A look into the Grotesque with Jan Svankmajer
Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer has been a major influence among young animators for his strange and often grotesque short films and unusual animation and editing style.
If you’ve never heard of him, but were born before the 90s (hey, we’re right there with you) you may remember a movie that came out in 1988 called Alice, directed by Svankmajer and based on the Lewis Carroll book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Below you can take a look at couple of his short films, largely centered around food. Svankmajer was fascinated with food and often used it as an analogy for larger themes. In the following clips, he touches on classism, consumerism and human disconnection without ever stating so overtly.
He said the following about this series, “Although we called our exhibition Food, it doesn’t mean that we consider what we do as some kind of “ nourishment for the spirit” or that we will be serving goulash in our exhibition, but because food is a short, easily comprehensible word, while the function it describes is practiced universally.”
He uses food as an analogy because it’s something we can all understand and relate to. It’s a common denominator.
Though there is no dialogue and no context, Svankmajer succeeds in delivering a message that makes us uncomfortable. We can immediately draw the parallels to society, though at its base, it’s just about food. It is a perfect example of how simple storytelling can still evoke emotions like disgust, empathy and curiosity. It is also a great piece of influential filmmaking when we look at artists who refuse to play into expected, cliched themes and narratives.
“I always say that I basically make my work ‘to order’, by which I mean to my ‘inner order’. It is really inside me, what’s going to come out.”
“For me, animated film is about magic. This is how magic becomes part of daily life, invading daily life…Magic enters into a quite ordinary contact with mundane things…(making) reality seem doubtful.”