Born in Prague in 1934, Svankmajer is one of the most distinguished and influential members of the Czech Surrealist Group. Tim Burton and the Quay brothers proclaim his influence on their work; Terry Gilliam and Daren Aronofsky publicly state their admiration. Although well-recognised by critics and his peers, his work is relatively little known and rarely shown to the public. LUFF takes the opportunity of the completion of his new film to go back over his career as a feature film director.

Svankmajer entered Fine Arts at the age of 16, before attending a rather unique course to become a professional puppet master. He graduated in 1958, and soon after met the surrealist artist Eva Svankmajer who became his wife and collaborator until her death in 2005. He shot 14 short films between 1964 and 1972. His hybrid methods constituted of a mixture of collage, stop motion and real shooting, and brought to life a surreal and sometimes gruesome universe, inspired by famous fantasy authors such as Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan Poe. His style and the common themes he focused on, like food and isolation – a metaphor of the communist regime – set him apart from his peers.
The explicitness of his works earned him to be banned from filmmaking in 1973 and until 1979. During this time, he worked as a special effects designer on his colleagues’ works (The Ninth Heart, by Juraj Herz, Nick Carter in Prague, by Oldrich Lipský), while devoting himself to sculpture and poetry.

The screening of the short film Dimensions of Dialogue at the 1982 Annecy festival drew the attention of the cinema world to this artist whose work had never really crossed the border of his own country. He then met Keith Griffiths, the producer of the Quay brothers, who gave him the opportunity to move on to the feature film format with Alice  (1988). This meeting, coupled with the fall of the eastern Bloc, allowed him to fulfill himself. His films became more and more demanding and knew no limits - except for the usual budget constraints. They are today shown in many festivals (including Locarno) but still distributed confidentially, and therefore not very accessible. No doubt because their commercial potential remains limited.