Available for rental in Film Forum's Virtual Cinema starting Friday, September 18 https://filmforum.org/film/jan-svankmajers-faust-virtual-cinema (1994) Czech animator-extraordinaire Jan Svankmajer reinterprets the Faustian legend using puppets, clay, and various other kinds of 3-dimenstional animation in his acclaimed follow-up to ALICE, his celebrated 1988 adaptation of Lewis Carroll. The filmmaker’s dark vision begins on the streets of Prague as an ordinary commuter seals his fate by accepting a handbill as he exits the subway. Svankmajer draws upon texts by Goethe, Marlow, and Grabbe, as well as popular folk interpretations. Huge marionettes, evil chickens, a flaming, riderless cart, and a clay fetus grown in a test tube that retains its baby body while its head ages… all figure into Svankmajer’s latest pact with the devil. A KIMSTIM RELEASE
I used to watch Jan Švankmajer’s films (especially FAUST) endlessly in my 20s and while his work has definitely creeped into the interstices of my brain, it’s never overly influenced any work of my own… or maybe it has? I don’t know? m.youtube.com/watch?v=UyW4...
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