Jan Svankmajer

Jan Svankmajer is a Czech stop motion director who has created many award winning films using his techniques.

He was born in 1934 in Prague. he studied at Pragues Academy of Performing Arts in the Department of Puppetry. He created his first surrealist film called The Garden in 1968 after this he joined Czechoslovakian Surrealist Group.

There he met his wife Eva Švankmajerová there. She was a surrealist painter and was internationally known. She helped collaborate with her husband on many of films such as Alice and Faust.  

He is well known for his surreal films that bring life to inanimate objects through stop motion. All his films have a surreal and nightmarish feel to them. His trademark is the use of exaggerated sounds within his films. Many of his films contain claymation and its use in creating charatcers and objects and food is a main subject and medium within his films.

Alice (1988)
Alice was Jan's first foray into feature filmaking. It was an adaptation of Lewis Carrols first Alice book and combines both stop motion and live action. It has a very dark design and was very distiguinshing.

 Faust (1994)
This was another feature film combining live action and stop motion. Again the overall theme was very dark but this time it was also humourous.