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Jan Švankmajer

Czech director, animator and artist · Czechia · On the map · Directors · Born 1934 · age 92

Jan Švankmajer is a Czech retired filmmaker, animator, writer, playwright and artist. He draws and makes free graphics, collage, ceramics, tactile objects and assemblages. In the early 1960s, he explored informel, which later became an important part of the visual form of his animated films.

Jan Švankmajer is read about 348 times a day, in 34 languages.

A typical day, 30 days to 6 November 2026

The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 110 days, one point a day.

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A life in dates

2022KunstkameraFilm, Director, Writer2017The Music of Zdeněk LiškaFilm2016“Censorship has an advantage of making you express yourself in very inventive ways and to think in symbols…those are the only weapons you have against censorship.”In their words29 June 2016Surrealism’s Not Dead: Interview with Jan Svankmajer

2010Czech Lion Award for Best Stage DesignAward2009Golden SixtiesSeries2008Annual award ACFKAward2006Cinema 16: European Short Films (European Edition)Film, Director2003The Collected Shorts of Jan SvankmajerFilm, Director2001Czech Lion Award for Best Stage DesignAward1996Conspirators of PleasureFilm, Director, Writer1994Czech Lion Award for Unique Contribution to Czech FilmAward1991The Death of Stalinism in BohemiaFilm, Director, Writer1989Animated Self-PortraitsFilm, Director, Writer1988AliceFilm, Director, Writer1982The Fall of the House of UsherFilm, Director, Writer1972Leonardo's DiaryFilm, Director, Writer1970The OssuaryFilm, Director, Writer1968Picnic with WeismannFilm, Director, Writer1966Punch and JudyFilm, Director, Writer1964The Last TrickFilm, Director, Writer1934Born4 September 1934

People around Jan

Known for

View all 40 titles
  • Food 1996
  • Dimensions of Dialogue 1983
  • Darkness, Light, Darkness 1990
  • Faust 1994
  • Alice 1988

Also in Deutsch

Filmography 40

152 credits on file

Television 1

Media & music

Awards

Czech Lion Award for Best Stage Design2010
Annual award ACFK2008
Czech Lion Award for Best Stage Design2001
Czech Lion Award for Unique Contribution to Czech Film1994

About this person

He is a leading representative of late Czech surrealism. In his film work, he created an unmistakable and quite specific style, determined primarily by a compulsively unorthodox combination of externally disparate elements. The anti-artistic nature of this process, based on collage or assemblage, functions as a meaning-making factor. The author himself claims that the intersubjective communication between him and the viewer works only through evoked associations, and his films fulfil their subversive mission only when, even in the most fantastic moments, they look like a record of reality. Some of the works he created together with his wife Eva Švankmajerová.

Country
Czechia
Category
Directors
Type
Movie Director
Status
Living
Dates
Born 1934 · age 92

In the same film or series as Jan

Osamu TezukaAlso in Animated Self-Portraits (1989)Roy AnderssonAlso in Cinema 16: European Short Films (European Edition) (2006)Lukas MoodyssonAlso in Cinema 16: European Short Films (European Edition) (2006)Bill PlymptonAlso in Animated Self-Portraits (1989)