The title photo of Jan Švankmajer’s Indiegogo campaign for his last feature film, Insects (©Athanor)

Following the successful launch of celebrated Czech animation filmmaker Jan Švankmajer’s proposed “last film” Insects , the film has already amassed over 130% of its initial target, with a hopeful stretch goal in place that would guarantee the film’s production budget via crowdfunding alone. As part of our recent interview discussing his work and latest endeavours, Skwigly were thrilled to give our readers the opportunity to grill Jan Švankmajer themselves! Read on to see his responses:

@skwigly describe how you involve your human actors in the animation process

— Fiona Dalwood (@fidalwood) May 20, 2016

Combining animation and live action together always proves to be a problem. The animation doesn’t have blurred frames, which is why animated motion has a different character then live motion. Therefore I always seek to make cuts in mid-movement when I’m cutting from live to animated shots (and vice versa). I start the motion in animation and finish it by moving the camera. As for the whole sequences I use lowered frame rate (e.g. 16fps) or I animate the actors.

@skwigly Who is animating today that you think we should be watching?

— Keith Bloomfield (@hardluck_hotel) May 20, 2016

I have to admit that I don’t follow the animation community very much. I regard the animated film as just one of the means of expression. Poetry is singular no matter the way we choose to take hold of it. So forgive me, but amongst the people whose work I follow are a very few animators. Specifically: Brothers Quay and David Lynch.

Jan Švankmajer working on one of the unique lithographies that will be available as rewards in the ongoing Indiegogo campaign for his final film. (©Lukáš Bucman)

@skwigly When you are such a prolific filmmaker how do you remain creatively satisfied on every project?

— Rhiannon Evans (@Re_Anon) May 20, 2016

According to Freud, any process of artmaking is a sublimation of libido. Hence it brings appeasement to its creator. So if you have functional libido it’s not even possible for the creation not to satisfy you.

@skwigly Which 1 of your short and feature films would you take to a desert island?Then I’d tell him his Alice is the best version on film.

— Rhys Howell (@Ghop56) May 20, 2016

Probably none, because it would be a big problem to screen it there. Nevertheless I consider Conspirators of Pleasure to be my most authentic film, To The Basement the most autobiographical one and Lunacy is probably the most philosophical piece.

From the making of Jan Švankmajer’s film Lunacy (©2005 Kazumi Terazaki)

What’s it like animating fresh meat “puppets” (like tongues, for example) – do you have to animate them quickly or do you prepare the set/prop so that they last the shoot? And what technique do you use to animate them, do you just manipulate the meat a certain way or do you build an “armature” for them? Are there any materials or methods left that you would still like to animate?
–Michael Tharme

The meat is animated partly by hanging it on nylon threads, partly by sticking aluminium wires into it. For my work the topic itself is pivotal, not the technique nor the material. I don’t begin to work on a film by asking myself: What haven’t I animated yet?

@skwigly ‘Did you eat the steaks afterwards?’

— Emma Reynolds (@EmmaIllustrate) May 20, 2016

After a working day the meat we animate goes gray under the lamps and begins to reek. Therefore when we use flesh or tongues in our shooting, we require an allied butcher who must provide us with fresh goods every day. So no, I didn’t eat it. My dogs did though.

@skwigly is there still a place for surrealism in contemporary art?

— Sean Vicary (@SeanVicary) May 20, 2016

There certainly isn’t, because surrealism is not a form of art. Surrealism is a specific revolutionary view on life and the world itself. There is no canon of surrealistic esthetics. Surrealism is a path.

Your violence often seems gastronomical; aggressor and victim seem to relate to one another almost like ingredients in a cooking show (eg. the deaths in Virile Games). Do you purposefully aim to give human suffering an ‘edible’ characteristic?
–Alex Boya

As Dalí once wrote: “Beauty should be edible, or not at all.” We could incorporate violence into this statement: “Violence should be edible, or not at all.” I’d like to point out that I’m always concerned with the negation of a negation, and that’s not negativity.

Read our recent interview with Jan Švankmajer on his latest project Insects, which will be accepting donations until July 5th. To learn more about the projects and the variety of exclusive perks available to funders visit insectsmovie.com

The post Jan Švankmajer answers Skwigly readers’ questions appeared first on Skwigly Animation Magazine.

You have been referring to this as your ‘final’ feature film, is there a reason you will be closing the door on features after Insects? And is it at all possible that you might return to short films after this project is completed?

The main reason is that I am 82 years old. By the time we will be finished shooting and editing Insects, I’ll be 84. Making a feature film claims a significant amount of psychological and physical strength, after all. Add five more years to those 84 (which represents the average time it usually takes us to get hold on the finances needed for a new project), and suddenly you have a 90 year old filmmaker – that is already a kind of a stretch. I don’t, however, rule out the possibility of perhaps filming another short film (or films) in the future.

The teaser video – featuring live insects – is very intriguing. From a production perspective, will you be exploring any new processes or approaches with this film?

Insects is going to be mainly about real-life actors. All the tricks and animation that will be part of the film will be made by classic stop motion animation, no CGI whatsoever. We are currently in the try-out phase, figuring out how exactly we are going to handle the shooting. It’s likely we’ll use the same technique for the ‘transformations’ in the film that we have already successfully adopted in Surviving Life – by employing photographical phases.

I’m also intrigued by the idea of combining the ‘making of’ documentary and the film itself. How did you come upon this metaphysical approach and do you anticipate any significant challenges as far as how it will all hold together without disrupting the flow of the film?

The combination has struck me amidst shooting the rehearsals. It seems to me like a good idea. We’ll see if it really works as we hope only when we’ll get to the cutting room. Obstacles are there to be overcome.

The film is centered around a rehearsal/performance of the Brothers Čapek’s Insect Play – what was it about the text that appealed to you (including and beyond its misanthropic leanings)?

I think the play that the Čapek brothers wrote is still topical today, although it was written in the 1920s. The fact that it is still performed in Czech theatres reflects this pretty well. My film, however, isn’t a cinema adaptation of the play. Only a few samples from the second act, The Exploiters, will be shown.. Rather, the film will tell the story of the actors that rehearse it. Although the parallels between the two are quite obvious, we could say that the material by the Čapek brothers simply forms a background for an entirely different story. I wrote the film story already back in 1970, but at the time it wouldn’t be accepted by the state film dramaturgy, which was overshadowed by the communist regime – precisely for its misanthropy. Anyway, I don’t think the world has changed at all after those 45 years and if it did, it was for the worse.

I personally had not found much by way of outright misanthropy in your prior work, although human idiosyncrasies and weakness do rear their heads. As an overall subject do you feel that misanthropy lends itself to your style of animation and storytelling?

I think that the main thread that weaves through all my films (above all, the feature-length ones) is the interplay between freedom and manipulation. It is impossible to avoid misanthropy with such themes.

Kafka’s famed Metamorphosis is also cited as an influence, can you expand on how his writings/themes are incorporated?

As I have written in the explicatory texts, the film shall remind us more of Kafka than of the Čapek brothers. This is because with respect to creative outcome, I feel closer to him than I do to the Čapek brothers. That works particularly with the imaginative process, quality and quantity-wise.

From the making of Alice, Švankmajer’s first feature film (©Athanor)

Prior features have their story roots in literature from the likes of Carroll, Poe and Goethe. Do you feel an affinity toward the writers whose source material you choose to adapt or do their writings serve more as springboards for your own creative process?

None of the movies I have made are an adaption to the literary sources I use – they may cite or evoke the dramatic work in very specific ways, nevertheless, they are still my very subjective interpretations. Besides, Carroll, Poe, Sade and Kafka – they all importantly determined my own journey. For long I have perceived them as an integral part of my mental being.

On that subject, it’s also noted that you did not formally study film, instead developing your own processes, possibly informed by theatre. Looking back at your work, if you were to do it all over again would you change anything?

I am afraid that to a large extent, our lives are determined by our childhood, by the stars, by our upbringing and by the repressive civilization we live in (at least all the relevant philosophers say so). Therefore, even if I wanted to change anything, it probably wouldn’t have been possible, not in a radical way anyway. Nevertheless, I rebelled against all of this all my life.

Jan Švankmajer with his lifelong friend and producer Jaromír Kallista (©Athanor)

You’ve been working with producer Jaromír Kallista for over thirty years now, can you expand a little on the dynamics of your working relationship and how it has benefited your work?

We’re both “children” of the ‘60s, which was a period filled with certain hope: first, the Prague Spring, then the French artistic revolt, followed by a “return” to the avant-garde roots in art. Commercialization of art and society, which is taking place nowadays, is a direct contradiction to our education and mentality. That’s what connects us, binds us together. Concerning our working cooperation, I don’t meddle with his production matters and he doesn’t meddle in my art.

Having made several adventurous films that incorporate animation over the past few decades, has the process become easier over time (either through technological advancement or your own artistic process)?

I don’t think so. Concerning the technique, we still shoot on classical 35mm film. Most of the cameras we use are from the past century and we don’t use computer generated animation because I am not fond of it. I miss the tactile dimension in CGI. It works with the “untouchable” reality which somehow makes the final outcome poorer by one imaginary emotional level. I hope I became more professionally experienced over the years, but that’s not the experience that is fundamental for art. Imagination is paramount and we all bear that within us since our childhood.

A GIF animation preview of one of the metamorphosis (©Athanor)

Your book Touching and Imagining refers to having to endure censorship from the Czechoslovakian government. Does this remain an issue today and has this had any effect on how you’ve approached subsequent work?

I think that the censorship did not affect even my older films very much; only in the sense that certain topics couldn’t have been realized at that time so I “shelved” them for later. It is ironically convenient today, since now, as an old man, I have plenty of topics to choose from. Insects presents the evidence.

Crowdfunding has become a very tempting prospect for a lot of people starting out in animation, though I’m always intrigued to hear what it is about this avenue that appeals most to seasoned veterans of film such as yourself?

With the ever-growing commercialization of art and life, it gets progressively more difficult to raise money for the kind of projects we’re interested in. And given that I have never conformed up to my current age of 82, I see no reason why I should start now. I’d rather never shoot anything again, than to conform. To me, crowdfunding seems like an apt way of circumventing the pressure of commerce. I’ll just wait and see.

To learn more about Insects visit the official website insectsmovie.com
You can learn more about (or contribute to) the film’s crowdfunding campaign at IndieGogo

The post An Interview with Jan Švankmajer appeared first on Skwigly Animation Magazine.

The title photo of Jan Švankmajer’s Indiegogo campaign for his last feature film, Insects

Jan Švankmajer – the world-renowned Czechoslovakian surrealist animation filmmaker whose body of work includes over thirty films including the features Alice, Conspirators of Pleasure and Little Otik – has recently announced plans to begin filming what he has declared as his final feature film Insects this summer. Following five years of development alongside longtime producer Jaromir Kallista, Švankmajer and Athanor Production Company have today launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for the film to assist with funds.

A prominent figure of the surrealist movement, Švankmajer is capable of creating dark yet playful worlds that dissect the very core of our society. Insects will be a surreal film whose imagery echoes that of Kafka and the Čapek Brothers. In a local pub in a small town, a troupe of amateur actors rehearse a play by the Čapek Brothers, The Insect Play. On a raised platform across the room we see a stage, set for Act II of the play. As the rehearsal progresses, the characters of the play are born and die with no regard to time. The actors slowly become one with them and some of them experience frightening transformations.

Jan Švankmajer working on one of the unique lithographs that will be available as rewards in the ongoing Indiegogo campaign for his final film.

Incentives available to those who wish to get involved include signed scripts, lithographs and DVDs, digital downloads, set visits, the opportunity to own one of the film’s insect ‘actors’ after the film is completed, producer credits and dinner with the director.

The Čapek brothers’ play is very misanthropic. I’ve always liked that — bugs behave as a human beings, and people behave as insects. My screenplay extends this misanthropy further while also reflecting Franz Kafka and his famous Metamorphosis. It gets increasingly difficult to fund independent art that scrutinizes the very core of our society. Who would deliberately support their own critics? We make a film every five or six years not because of a lack of ideas, but due to the lack of funds to back up our projects. Our hope is that crowdfunding may be the way to change this. The initial $150,000 we aim to raise on Indiegogo will enable us to start shooting with live actors; eventually, we will need to raise far more in order to complete the animations and post-production.

-Jan Švankmajer, director

Keep your eyes on Skwigly in the coming days for exclusive insight into this new venture from Švankmajer himself. In the meantime you can learn more about the film at insectsmovie.com

The post Jan Švankmajer to embark on final feature film ‘Insects’ appeared first on Skwigly Animation Magazine.