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 Scene from FAUST |
| MON & TUES, JULY 9 & 10 DOUBLE FEATURE |
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| Scene from FAUST |
Czech animator-extraordinaire, Jan Svankmajer, reinterprets the Faustian legend using puppets, clay, and various other kinds of 3-dimensional animation, in his first feature since ALICE, his critically acclaimed adaptation of Lewis Carroll. The filmmaker's dark vision begins on the streets of Prague as an ordinary commuter seals his fate by accepting a handbill as he exits the subway. Svankmajer draws upon texts by Goethe, Marlowe and Grabbe, as well as popular folk interpretations. Huge marionettes, evil chickens, a flaming, riderless cart, and a clay fetus grown in a test tube that retains its baby body while its head ages . . . all figure into Svankmajer's latest pact with the devil.
1:15, 4:10, 7:05, 10:00
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"It could easily
freak you out, but its maker would probably feel hurt if it didn't."
-The
New Yorker.
"Brilliant, macabre, poetic and witty. . . An
expertly executed, profoundly imaginative combination
of live-action, claymation, puppet-theatre, stop-motion
animation and special effects. This is filmmaking
that galvanises the mind and astonishes the eyes.
In a word, magic."
- Geoff Andrew, Time Out
(U.K.)
"A Surrealist sense of the burlesque, the droll,
and the uncanny. It also reflects Svankmajer's fascination
with the alchemical magic of Renaissance Europe. And
finally, FAUST is a homage to Prague itself."
- Michael O'Pray, Sight and Sound
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Excerpts from an interview with Svankmajer by Geoff Andrew in Time Out (London), Sept. 14, 1994:
To me, Faust is one of the most fascinating stories mankind has invented; that's why there are so many different interpretations. Marlowe, say, saw Faust as someone who transgresses certain limits and is rightly punished, while Goethe made him a great Romantic representative of mankind, a Titan who risked his life to cross the limits imposed, by the Church for example, on human knowledge. These days, we can't look at the myth through the eyes of the Romantics; it's tempting to cross the limits of knowledge, but we know it can lead to the destruction of life, of nature. So what I've tried to do is to undress the story, to get it out of its religious and Romantic garb and return it to our everyday life.
I've tried to look at Faust-philosophically and psychologically-as a kind of Everyman. It's a dilemma everyone knows: either he can expand his knowledge even though he knows he'll be punished (he knows this myth); or he can fail to revolt and spend his life in the institutionalised happiness promised by society. Either way his fate is tragic, because he's selling his soul-to society or the Devil . . . .
Of course, no one knows what the Devil looks like; he arises from our imagination. I think man invented the Devil before God. Havel himself led me to this idea, because he claimed he's not surprised people are evil; rather, he's always amazed when he finds goodness in man. Anyway, man probably saw evil-demons and bad spirits-all around him, and only then invented God so there'd be something good as well! And of course the Church made God a father-figure, albeit one who punishes us, whereas the Devil is not our father but comes from something real within us, which man must repress. The veneer of civilisation is thin, and disappears whenever war breaks out; man becomes the animal that is deep within him. You can see that in Bosnia, Rwanda, and elsewhere . . . .
There's a lot of misunderstanding about surrealism. People still see it through the prism of certain works of art, by Dali for example; they look at it superficially in terms of aesthetics. But there is no surrealist aesthetics; it's a psychology, a view of the world, which poses new questions about freedom, eroticism, the subconscious, and which attracts a certain sort of people-subversive types. It offers an alternative to the ideology offered by most modern societies, and it's a great adventure; it's tried to return art, which has become representational, aesthetic, commercial, to its level of magic ritual. And that's why I consider myself a surrealist. If art has any purpose, I think it's to liberate. . .both the artist and the spectator. And if it doesn't liberate, it's just a commodity, an aesthetic game.
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FAUST (1994, 97 mins.)
Written & directed by Jan Svankmajer.
Director of Photography: Svatopluk Maly.
Art Direction: Eva Svankmajerova and Jan Svankmajer.
Animation: Bedrich Glaser.
France/Czech Republic/England/Germany.
In English.
A Zeitgeist Films Release.
Cast list:
Petr Cepek - Faust
Stanislava Babicka - Dancers
Lenka Havrankova
Magda Horejsova
Petra Hrstkova
Vera Masopustova
Josef Podsednik - Puppet Actors
Jaroslava Zelenkova
Andrew Sachs - Voices
*Also with: Jan Kraus, Vladimir Kudla, Antonin Zacpal, Jiri Suchy.
*Our materials do not have character names for these actors, but they were all featured in supporting roles.
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