Sun 18.10.2020 at 15.00 at the Mudam Auditorium
With an introduction by: Vladimír Bärtl, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Luxembourg
In collaboration with: CinEast (central and eastern european film festival, Luxembourg)
CinEast 2020 and Mudam are proud to present a documentary film portrait of the world-renowned Czech filmmaker, Jan Švankmajer, exploring his playful affiliation with surrealism. A lively dialogue engages with the director’s principles, creative process and the ideas, themes and obsessions explored in his films.
ATHANOR – Alchemical Furnace / Alchymická pec
Czech Republic, Slovakia, 2020
Written and directed by: Adam Oľha & Jan Daňhel
With: Jan Švankmajer
Duration: 117 min.
Language: Czech with English subtitles
Jan Švankmajer (b. 1934, Prague) studied at the Institute of Industrial Arts and the Marionette Faculty of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts. He first experimented with film-making after becoming involved with the multimedia productions of Prague's Lanterna Magika Theatre. He began making short films in 1964, and continued working in the same medium for over twenty years, finally achieving his long-held ambition to make a feature film based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland entitled Alice in 1988. He has also exhibited his drawings, collages and so-called 'tactile sculptures', many of which were produced in the mid-1970s, when he was temporarily banned from film-making by the Czech authorities. He has been an official member of the Prague Surrealist Group since 1969.