Reviews : Dark Alchemy: The Films of Jan Svankmajer. Edited by Peter Hames. Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1995. Pp. 208. £14.95 (Pbk
Abstract
ReviewsDark Alchemy: The Films of Jan Svankmajer. Edited by Peter Hames. Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1995. Pp. 208. £14.95 (Pbk SAGE Publications, Inc.1997DOI: 10.1177/004724419702700108 Emma Widdis A study of Czech animator Jan Svankmajer tells as much of Czech underground culture as it does of the more esoteric history of animated film, and Peter Hames's edited volume of essays on Svankmajer consciously 0047-2441/97/2701-0111 $5.00 @ 1996 Richard Sadler Ltd straddles these two related fields, providing a contextual and lively introduction to the film-maker and to Czech society of the late 1960s. Svankmajer remains, however, an intensely and consciously individual artist, and his work ultimately evades any attempts to incorporate it into a broader glance at art under Stalinist repression. It is precisely these contradictions that provide the chief interest of Peter Hames's collection. Svankmajer belongs to a cultural generation of names familiar in the West: Vaclav Havel, Iurii Menzel, Milan Kundera, Milos Forman. His first animated films were made against the background of the Czech New Wave, and under severe Stalinist repression. Although recognizing that 'a common "anti" attitude' unites them, however, Svankmajer seeks to distance himself from the Czech New Wave, and this volume contextualizes him more effectively within