The Švankmajer Film Festival 2015 will be held in late February at Theater Image Forum in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Czech-born Jan Švankmajer is one of the leading Surrealist film directors. He graduated from the Dramatic Arts Faculty of the Academy of Arts in Prague and began making short films in the 1960s. His style strongly reflected Švankmajer's resistance to socialism, totalitarianism, and commercialism. For this reason, when the Czech Republic came under communist dictatorship, he was temporarily banned from making films. However, he resumed his work after completing The Castle of Otranto in 1979. He has produced numerous feature films, receiving high praise at film festivals such as Cannes and Berlin.

Three of Švankmajer's most representative feature films will be screened at the festival. His first feature film, Alice, is based on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Combining live action and stop-motion, the film portrays various objects, including an Alice doll, a stuffed White Rabbit, and a doll of the Thoughtful Hatter, in humorous and grotesque ways. Otesánek, which won the Andrzej Wajda Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, is a dark fantasy about a childless couple who raise a doll as their child. Surviving Life thrillingly depicts a love suspense story where dreams and reality intertwine, combining a vast collage of images with live action. In addition, Švankmajer's work, including 22 short films, will be released in cinemas all at once. A special screening will also be made of the 1977 stage play The Magic Circus, for which Švankmajer himself designed the puppets and stage art. In opening the festival, Švankmajer commented, "These films are imaginative, and this fantastical imagination is always subversive, because imagination prioritizes the possible over the real. The films I have selected for the festival demonstrate the superior position of imagination in my work, because, like the great French poet Charles Baudelaire, I have always considered imagination the queen of all human faculties."

After screening at Theater Image Forum, the films will be screened at Kobe Art Village Center, Kyoto Minami Kaikan, Cine Nouveau in Osaka, Nagoya Cinematheque, and Theater Kino in Sapporo from April to June.


【Event Information】
Švankmajer Film Festival 2015
Venue: Theater Image Forum
Address: 2-10-2 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Dates: Late February
Admission: 1,500 yen for adults, 1,200 yen for university students, vocational school students, and seniors, 1,100 yen for high school students