"I have never felt myself to be only a filmmaker." "I just accept it as one of the many forms of expression." "If I'm not making films, I can devote my energies to my writing, my tactile experiments, my ceramics or collages." "Like all Surrealists, for me, poetry exists in many forms." "(Crunching, squelching)" "(Clattering)" "(Clattering)" "(Rustling)" "(Clattering)" "(Crunching)" "(Slurping, squelching)" "Svankmajer has obviously been... much impressed by this... humanisation of objects." "That's one of, I think, a very important theme in his work." "He's able to make faces out of objects or to animate objects and, clearly, animated film, generally, thrives on this possibility." "And, perhaps, in a way," "Arcimboldo is one of the first animators, producing still images, clearly, but they are already, potentially, about to move off from representing a face, if you like, into becoming dances of objects, in the Svankmajer manner." "The attraction of Arcimboldo relates, I believe, to his ability to create... ..a sublime and ridiculous allegory, through... ..making a man, a figure, out of the objects that the man uses." "So you have this play between the inanimate world of objects and the natural world, too." "(Bell)" "SVANKMAJER:" "Like Arcimboldo, this desire to create transformations is very strong in me." "In my films, people are often replaced by objects, which have always seemed more permanent and more exciting through their latent content, their memory." "In the films, I have always tried to uncover this content, to listen to the objects and decipher their narration." "Here lies the special appeal animation holds for me, which is to let objects speak for themselves." "(Gong)" "(Circus music)" "(Applause)" "* Czech ballad" "(Needle jumps on record, phrase repeats)" "(Squeaking)" "(Ballad continues)" "(Needle jumps again, phrase repeats)" "PAUL HAMMOND:" "It also ties Svankmajer into... what I consider to be one of the major influences on him, which is the so-called 'primitive cinema'." "This is to say, films made before 1 905, before conventional narrative filmmaking took over." "You have the films of Méliés, you have the films of Pathé, trick films." "These refer back to the magic theatre." "The image of the conjuror, of course, is something we see in Svankmajer." "(Piano chords)" "It is clearly a part of a very long tradition, a very flourishing tradition of Surrealism in Czechoslovakia." "I think it came from... oh, people like Nezval and Teige, in the '30s, who were close friends of Breton's." "So we've got this very turbulent, repressed history of Czech Surrealism." "Of course, the late-'60s liberalisation encouraged the Surrealists to come out again." "And, erm, there was a tremendous upsurge of activity, which keyed again in with Paris." "There's been this axis between Prague and Paris that, as I've said, goes back to the 1 920s, basically." "And as a result of..." "Surrealist activity, people like Svankmajer could really start to elaborate their aesthetic." "The fact remains that the intention of Surrealism was to move beyond the level... ..of art as aesthetics and rather to grasp something, which, again, has to do with the deeper reality or truth of reality." "And, erm, therefore... fabrication or making, creation as a whole..." "..would not be necessarily seen as... ..aesthetic enterprise, but rather as a...syncretic enterprise, where a number of motifs play their role." "The interest in making a visible object or visible piece... ..is simultaneously related to an interest in discovering the miraculous, the unusual, the hidden, the obscure and so on and so forth." "* Jazz" "SVANKMAJER:" "For me, the Surrealist movement was represented by Breton in Paris and Teige in Czechoslovakia." "But the Surrealists in Prague are the most active and have the most continuity, historically." "It is possible we are more committed, because activity here in Prague does not collapse, like it does in the West, where groups seem to be too concerned with preconceived ideas and notions of what Surrealism is." "Well, I know that when Breton went there for a major international exhibition of Surrealism in 1 935, although he hadn't been there before, he said he immediately recognised it as another capital, like Paris, which had a magic atmosphere," "a poetic city, to do partly with its history, with its geography, with its climate, perhaps, with its architecture, with its paintings, with, for example, alchemy." "It represents, if you like, the obverse of Paris, the dark, subliminal side of the European culture, which balances off the rational, Cartesian side, represented by Paris." "And I'm sure the Surrealists felt that they had to get away, in many senses, from the traditional French clarity and that their plunge into the unconscious was, in a sense, paralleled by a visit, at least, to 'the magic capital of Europe', as Breton calls it." "Brcetco wrcotce a tcext ca cecd D scourse sorry, lntnoduction to the Discounse on the Paucity of Reality in which he suggested that you might fabricate objects that came to you in dreams, and that these objects, which were..." "..no less palpable, in a sense, than ordinary objects, should be put into circulation in the world and, thereby, in a sense, discredit the 'things of reality', as he put it," "those things which are conditioned only by utilitarian reality." "And, subsequently, in the '30s, the Surrealists began a veritable..." "..fashion for collecting, fabricating, erm... finding objects of all kinds, different kinds, and, I think, part of the interest one could describe as a 'fetishistic' interest." "Sco ycou avvce a covvce co t ce cobojcect, yces, bout ts a covvce co" "..the object that's been left high and dry by history, basically." "An object, which has enigma built into it." "Because we have forgotten all about it." "In a sense, we've repressed its function, its meaning." "And this brought the object to life." "It gave it a kind of... oneiric, dreamlike quality." "ROGER cardinal:" "I think Svankmajer has, very wittily, restricted himself to fairly obvious, easily-accessible kitchen objects, very often." "Somewhat like the Surrealist poet Benjamin Péret, who equally likes to play with very everyday objects and to make the marvellous out of them, by bringing them together in unusual combinations." "The Surrealist magic lies within reach." "It's not just something that one can only do at vast expense, as it were." "One can have Surrealism on an everyday basis." "DAWN ADES:" "Svankmajer seems to be interested, particularly, in... ..let's say 'natural objects'." "In perhaps objects that might normally belong to cabinets that 1 9th-century natural historians might put together." "Stones, butterflies, beetles." "Skeletons even." "He has an interest in... taxonomy, an interest in collecting things and placing them in...categories." "And these categories may be a category that is a correct natural history one, but it may be, in fact, some other category that he's invented himself." "What's interesting, perhaps, about encyclopaedias is that they have this marvellous Surrealist arbitrariness about them." "A natural history museum is organised into sections." "So you'll have the Palaeolithic section and the Neolithic section and you'll have the different ferns in one place and you'll have the stuffed birds in another." "But an encyclopaedia puts things alphabetically, so you then have rather amazing conjunctions of things." "A Surrealist, I think, would always be sensitive to the magic of encyclopaedic collecting." "Just under the letter A, alone, you have all the most marvellous things that you could possibly want." "(Woman sings in Czech)" "(Singing in Czech continues)" "PAUL HAMMOND:" "It's a film which is about dialectical thinking, if you like." "Dialectics is very crucial to Surrealism, because it's a dynamic way of conceiving the world, in which...erm... the world is imagined as being in total flux." "Everything is moving, as if it were a sort of magical scribble." "Thought is not centred anywhere, it's de-centred." "The human, the spectator, is involved in that which he watches." "It's not like the cosy... armchair logic, which is what the Surrealists were fighting against, of... shall we say... inductive reasoners." "It's a dynamic world of flux, of interpenetration of opposites and change." "Erm...and of contradiction and it enabled the Surrealists to... imagine, for instance, that the dream and the reality weren't mutually exclusive, but interpenetrated each other." "SVANKMAJER:" "Like Rudolf ll, who created a mythical Wundenkammen of curiosities here in Prague, I also am a collector." "Sometimes, certain objects stimulate my interest and I just start collecting." "Then, something begins to work in my mind, and usually a film grows out of it." "In this way, a meaningful bond grows up between man and things, boascecd co cd a coguces, not on consumption." "(Tapping)" "So there is a kind of rigour about his collecting instinct, but within that one feels that his... his instincts are totally..." "..unregulated, that he'll have stones of all kinds and he'll have objects of all kinds, within that register, and that part of his... po ay as a cco cectcor s, sco tco spocea k," "to try out the different combinations, the different ways of presenting your collection." "(Chimes)" "(Music box melody )" "Play itself was one of the... ..strategies that the Surrealists...adored." "It was a way of pooling subjectivity... erm...in order to... open up possibilities, but at the same time not just in a kind of... erm...onanistic... er... spreading of self, it was a way of..." "..discovering the uniqueness of the individual, by comparing his contribution to a game to the next man or woman's." "So you have this sense of wanting to open up reality, rather than close it down." "Again, an attack on the very narrow, logical positivism that the Surrealists hated." "The Surrealist notion of love is really almost an alchemical one, one that brings together things which are very resistant to contact and produces a kind of magic spark, a magic convulsion, almost." "And this is, in turn, paralleled in the Surrealist idea of imagery, where objects brought together are made to combine in totally magical new ways." "If you like, the alchemical principle is to... to form a union of contraries, so that the sexual act is, in a sense, a metaphor for the alchemical conjunction of opposites, the marriage of opposites." "And I think, in the film, it's done most lyrically with the two figures, the male and the female, them meshing together, and forming, eventually, in their violent contact, a curiously amorphous" "and yet very exhilarating, a thrilling mass of pure clay, which is, in a sense..." "..the most negative, the least inspiring substance, but is also, implicitly, the ground of everything." "It's the coming together of all opposites, the final conjunction." "SVANKMAJER:" "There are, indeed, many constant elements that survive from the original Surrealist movement." "Dreams, eroticism, a magical perception of the world." "But for the creative artist, the experiences of childhood are the most important." "I always find that a preliminary impulse is generated from childhood memories." "DAWN ADES:" "It seems to be the film that, in some sense, is closest to Surrealism." "It's certainly very close to the Surrealist idea about the peculiar value and properties of childhood in the Finst Manifesto of Sunnealism, in 1 924." "Breton actually began the description of childhood." "And...how... in childhood, the imagination has full reign." "It doesn't actually know any boundaries." "There may be material problems for a child, there may be daily problems, but, in a sense, he has a complete freedom to imagine another existence, another world, another life." "And it's only as he grows up and gradually becomes more and more aware of the demands of... 'arbitrary utility', I think, as Breton called it or 'pragmatic reality', that this imagination is progressively caged in and bound up," "and, finally, by about your twentieth year, abandons you altogether to a lacklustre fate." "At the end of the film Jabbenwocky where you have the wardrobe with an empty suit of grown-up clothes and a cat, turning round and round desperately in a cage, you actually have an image, which is virtually drawn from the Finst Manifesto," "precisely about that loss of the imagination, the caging-in of the arbitrary utility of the ordinary, everyday world." "What I found impressive about Svankmajer was this sense of precision and rigour." "These aren't just any old events, any old objects being thrown around to make amusing combinations." "They are being handled with a great, almost a scientific discipline at work here." "He knows what he wants to do." "He does it very precisely." "That's not to say that it's not poetic, it's not lyrical." "(Drumbeat)" "(Drumbeat continues)" "(Cymbals clash)" "(Bell jingles)" "And the play with those possibilities, I think, is the charm of the marionette theatre, as such, which is a duplication of theatre, the theatre in a theatre." "Which touches on a series of extremely powerful notions." "The notion of marionette as homunculus, as the mechanical non-animated." "The notion of creating a reality out of that non-animated figure." "And, of course, the fascination with the demiurgos and homunculus come very close together." "They then touch on another very strong phenomenon of 'mask'." "(Shrieking orchestral strings)" "(Fairground music)" "ROGER cardinal:" "This is a very strange and very troubling thing when it happens." "When a mannequin moves and you're not quite sure whether it's a person mimicking a puppet or an actual puppet." "And some of this is... some of this disturbing dualism, this hesitation as to how to interpret the thing, comes out in the Don Juan film." "I think it's..." "It's, in a sense, almost a philosophical proposition." "is man a machine?" "is man to be understood, if you like, scientifically, as a construct of different bits?" "Can we take out a heart and replace it or a kidney?" "is man to be assembled in that way?" "Or, on the other hand, isn't man something integral, harmonious, organic, that shouldn't be treated in that fashion?" "And perhaps Svankmajer is picking up this kind of thematics in some of his pieces." "Anyone dealing with puppets, in fact, must be an alchemist, because if you think of the tradition of the Golem..." "The Golem is a clay figure." "Which was given life by writing on its forehead the word 'life'." "And when you strike out only one letter it's 'emeth'." "And when you strike out the 'e', it becomes 'meth', which is 'death'." "So life and death depends on one letter." "So, the man who does that... is a kind of an alchemist." "And that's why I think... most animators..." "..are, unconsciously, probably, Surrealists." "Surrealists use the notion of alchemy as a metaphor for poetic activity." "A way of dredging up..." "Erm, a way of converting base metals, sited, as far as they were concerned, in the unconscious, from dross into gold." "So it was a poetic metaphor." "SVANKMAJER:" "Hermetic teaching shows that, by touching an object in a certain emotional condition, one leaves one's imprints, not fingerprints, but emotional prints." "And a person who touches that object, imbibes them." "So I don't actually animate objects, I coerce their inner life out of them." "Of all the senses, touch is without doubt the most unknown, bocecausce ts t cecd cdcow tco t ce act vv t ces co cevvcerycday wcork and to a kind of imperialism of sight." "The sense of touch perceives only form." "The toucher interprets the form according to their desires." "Despite all our efforts to identify an object by touch, we are at the service of our imagination." "(Man speak s Czech)" "CONRO Y MADDOX:" "I think there is a certain pessimism in his films." "He's not holding out any hope." "But the pessimism has its own extravagance, if you like." "It has its own voluptuousness and its own desirability." "It's the sort of death thing, if you like, which also has a certain attraction and appeal." "And this again, you see, is looking into the crack s and exploring that thing behind the thing." "The camera is always very close up to the texture of these objects." "They are made very palpable, very materially real." "I think he's also interested in graffiti, in casual mark s, in mark s that are not made deliberately or with a particular purpose, that might be made by somebody drawing a stick along a soft wall" "or a child scratching its name into..." "into a stone in a churchyard." "There's an interest in the... ..the tracing that..." "..life makes, as it passes the permanent objects of the world." "This is an argument, in a sense, for imagination, for fantasy, for spontaneity, for desire." "But it's an argument that is a strong one." "It's a wilful and highly-structured argument and, one senses, perhaps, a political dimension to this, that one needs to be tough, one needs to know what one's saying in order to get a message through." "I think the fact that this message is now getting through, albeit at a rather subliminal level, a rather implicit level, is a token of this purposefulness." "It's not art as beauty and as aestheticism." "It is rather to do with truth, meaning, hope, dignity, those notions that bring these two apparently rather distinct territories together into one." "But also, I think, one should remember that... ..an explanation can be just as persuasive without being quite explicit." "In other words, there's a lot of meaning when you don't know the true explanation of what is happening in front of you." "In the end, I thought they were not pessimistic films." "I thought they were extremely vigorous and robust films, which could actually... I mean, present..." "..a certain pessimism without, in the end, being totally pessimistic." "His cinema is a montage cinema, it's a cinema of editing." "Erm..." "But he, to my mind, he never uses that Surrealist cut." "So, in that sense he's a bit of a worm in the bud." "I'm sure he would like that designation, anyway." "But it sets him both within and apart from the Surrealist canon." "In fact, he enlarges the Surrealist canon, and I think this is his great quality." "SVANKMAJER:" "I have given up trying to recreate a real reflection of life in my films and, in the end, have trod the path of objective description and optical analogy, as a way of presenting one's mobile swamp of memories."