Jan Svankmajer

Highest Rated: 95% Alice (1989)

Lowest Rated: 64% Lunacy (2005)

Birthday: Sep 4, 1934

Birthplace: Prague, Czechoslovakia

Jan Svankmajer is a major figure of contemporary East European animation whose surrealistic, often macabre work owes more to the nightmarish visions of Kafka and Bunuel than to the sunny daydreams of Walt Disney and his creative progeny. Noted for investing otherwise ordinary objects with ominous overtones, Svankmajer reached his widest audience to date with a feature-length adaptation of Lewis Carroll's "Alice" (1988) which blended animated and live-action footage--a technique he had earlier used to hair-raising effect in "Down to the Cellar" (1983).

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