Jan Švankmajer Movies

"The Castle of Otranto" is animation/short/mockumentary based on "The Castle of Otranto", a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole, the first Gothic novel. The...

A short film based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" and Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's "A Torture by Hope".

A man sits down to watch a football match, which seems to consist of the players being violently mutilated in various inventive ways. The players...

A man is trapped in a sinister flat where nothing seems to obey the laws of nature.

Two puppets, Punch and Judy, do battle to the death over the custody of a live guinea pig.

A little girl goes down to the basement cellar to fetch some potatoes, and finds all her hidden fears about the cellar depicted in animated form.

Eugene, an aging man, leads a double life – one real, the other in his dreams. He goes to see a psychoanalyst, who tries to interpret the...

A look at the legendary Czech sound designer and his profession. Editor and documentary filmmaker Adéla Špaljová has her father...

In this animated version of Edgar Allan Poe's story, a traveller arrives at the Usher mansion to find that the sibling inhabitants are living under a...

The original 54-minute documentary, as broadcast by Channel Four on 20 June 1984, after which the animated links by the Quay Brothers were recompiled...

In 1897, in a castle near the town of Werewolfville in the Carpithians, a slightly deranged Professor Orfanik experiments with his new inventions...

In this early stop-motion film by Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer, a device consisting of a clock, a pendulum, a faucet and a bucket enacts a series...

Martin, a poor student, volunteers to go on a quest to find a cure for the princess Adriana, who is stricken with a strange illness. Unknown to...

It is a story of three veterans released from the army. During one night spent camping in the country they one by one wake up and meet three elvish...

The Dung Beetle is late, the Parasite is asleep and Mrs Larva is more interested in her knitting than the director’s instructions. It’s...

The last moments of a creature made out of fruits and vegetables.

Animated drawings inspired by Leonardo da Vinci are intercut with seemingly unrelated (but in fact strangely similar) live-action scenes.

This half-hour BBC documentary offers a revealing look at Svankmajer at work on "Death of Stalinism in Bohemia," and uses excerpts from his earlier...

The age-old story of Don Juan, played by giant puppets.