30 November 2019

I decided to changed the artist to write an essay to Jan Svankmajer instead due to my interest in his various methods in producing animated films from stop motion animation to live action filmmaking.

Field/Specialism: Surrealist Filmmaker

Medium: A mix of stop-motion animation, puppets and live-action films.

Year born: 1934

Years active: 1964-2018

Country of birth: Czechoslovakia

Country based in: Czech Republic

What topics and ideas does she confront/consider/base her work on?

Political satire, political criticism. Also, it is about an interplay between freedom and manipulation.

Who and/or what has influenced her and her work? (other practitioners, paradigms, social movements, innovations, techniques, laws, films, music etc.)

I believe it started with a puppet theatre given at Christmas back in 1942. He also discovered about Surrealism when he studied at the College of Applied Arts in Prague in 1950. His understanding towards the movement deepened when he joined the Czechoslovak Surrealist Group nearly two decades later. He was strongly influenced by Soviet avant-garde theatre and film when studied at the Department of Puppetry at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts.

What impact has she had on her field? e.g. who and/or what has been influenced by her and/or her work? (other practitioners, paradigms, social movements, innovations, techniques, laws, films, music etc.)

Many filmmakers such as the Quay brothers, Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton
David Lynch and Henry Selick are all inspired by him. I found an element
of Surrealism, the play between the real and the imagined in many of the
films produced from such filmmakers as well.

How would you describe her work? Does her work relate to your practice/areas of interest? If so how?

I adore his works in terms of how he experimented with various techniques from stop-motion animation in clay, objects or puppets to live-action. In my recent works, I also tried to mix different media together in order to create
new visual language. Surrealism is also a movement that I believe lies behind my own works as well which I could learn much from the artist.

What do you think about her work? Do you like it? Why/why not? Do you think she achieved what she set out to? Why? Why not? Do you have any criticism of her work? i.e. do you think they could be better/more successful in achieving their goals/aims/objectives? If so, how?

I really like his works as mentioned above in terms of his experimentation
and the underlying surrealism element, the blur between the real and
the dream, the animate and the unanimate and the life and the death. I
like how he wisely uses animation as a mean to tell tough political issues
but then get softened down by the comical tone of the medium. Also, I
like how he uses human raw emotions in the stories for example, how he
could draws out a child’s primitive feelings in the movie, Alice. Somehow,
I still doubt about how much violent should the film be in order not to
make it become an improper example for young audiences.