Jan Švankmajer / Keith Leslie Johnson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johnson, Keith Leslie, 1974- author.

Series:

Contemporary film directors

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Švankmajer, Jan, 1934---Criticism and interpretation.

Švankmajer, Jan.

Švankmajer, Jan, 1934-.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xii, 191 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2017]

Summary:

Jan Švankmajer enjoys a curious suit of anti-reputation: he is famous for being obscure. Unapologetically surrealist, Švankmajer draws on the traditions and techniques of stop-motion animation, collage, montage, puppetry, and clay to craft bizarre filmscapes. If these creative choices are off-putting to some, they have nonetheless won the Czech filmmaker recognition as a visionary animator. Keith Leslie Johnson explores Švankmajer's work as a cinema that spawns new and weird life forms-hybrids of machine, animal, and non-organic materials like stone and dust. Johnson's ambitious approach unlocks access to the director's world, a place governed by a single, uncanny order of being where all things are at once animated and inert. For Švankmajer, everything is at stake in every aspect of life, whether that life takes the form of an object, creature, or human. Sexuality, social bonds, religious longings-all get recapitulated on the stage of inanimate things. In Johnson's view, Švankmajer implores us to reprogram our relationship with the vital matter all around us, including ourselves and our bodies. Book jacket.

Contents:

Animist cinema

humiliation, or object life

Wunderkammer, or Creaturely Life

Haptics, or Animal Life

Imagination, or Political Life

Stalinism in Bohemia

Survival, or Ecological Life

Interviews with Jan Švankmajer.

Interviews with Jan �Svankmajer.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes filmography.

Other Format:

Online version: Johnson, Keith Leslie, 1974- Jan Svankmajer.

ISBN:

9780252041471

025204147X

9780252083020

0252083024

OCLC:

985680346