With a recorded introduction from Pavel Horáček, programme director of Anifilm, the largest animation film festival in Czechia
Wheelchair accessible | English and descriptive subtitles | Pay-what-you-can tickets (£2–12)
If the ticket or other costs, such as childcare or transport, make this screening unaffordable, please see details of our Audience Access Fund.
One of the most renowned film traditions globally, 20th-century Czech animation is known for its craftsmanship, political and social subversiveness, and often surreal storytelling. In this instalment of our ever-popular animation series, we focus exclusively on the works of several Czech ‘Ani-masters’, exploring this rich and imaginative landscape by taking the viewers on a five-decade-long journey through its many wonders and marvels.
We begin with the abstract short Fantaisie Érotique, doubling as both an experimental work of colour animation and a soap ad, representing the earliest stages of Czech animation. Along the way, we chart the many rich and imaginative worlds conjured by these ani-masters: a local Czech vigilante fights off the SS in Springman and the SS; a wayward blue apron goes on a surreal adventure with their paper-plane companion in Blue Apron; European civilisation faces extinction in the Bruegelian masterpiece Turris Babel.
Content notes: nudity, depictions of Nazism
Access notes: flashing colours and lights, loud noises
Co-curated by Andrew Currie and Heather Bradshaw
Programme (in order of screening)
Fantaisie Érotique by Irena Dodalová and Karel Dodal, 1936
Springman and the SS (Pérák a SS) by Jiří Trnka and Jiří Brdečka, 1946
Inspiration (Inspirace) by Karel Zeman, 1949
Blue Apron (Modrá zástěrka) by Hermína Týrlová, 1965
Laokoon by Václav Mergl, 1970
The Face (Tvář) by Jiří Brdečka, 1973
Disc Jockey (Diskžokej) by Jiří Barta, 1980
Turris Babel by Jan Mimra, 1989
Darkness, Light, Darkness (Tma, světlo, tma) by Jan Švankmajer, 1989