Czechoslovak Animation: A Shorts Program

Director: Multiple Dirs

1949 / 66min / DCP

A program of short works from some of the finest creative minds in Czechoslovak animation. Includes Karel Zeman’s Inspiration, a dialogue-free film featuring glass figurines of characters drawn from commedia dell’arte; Jan Švankmajer’s Dimensions of Dialogue, which no less a personage than Terry Gilliam called one of the 10 best animated films of all time; Jiří Barta’s A Ballad about Green Wood, inspired by the Legend of Vesna, a well-known piece of Slavic folklore; Břetislav Pojar’s Romance, which combines puppet and rarely utilized “pin screen” animation (most familiar from the prologue to Orson Welles’s The Trial); Michaela Pavlatova’s Reci Reci Reci, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film; and Hermína Týrlová and František Sádek’s immediately postwar The Revolt of the Toys, in which the playthings of the title unite in pursuit of a Nazi soldier (!).

Inspiration (Karel Zeman, 1949, 8 mins)

Dimensions of Dialogue (Jan Švankmajer, 1982, 11 mins)

A Ballad about Green Wood (Jiří Barta, 1983, 11 mins)

Romance (Břetislav Pojar, 1962, 14 mins)

Reci Reci Reci (Michaela Pavlatova, 1991, 8 mins)

The Revolt of the Toys (Hermína Týrlová, František Sádek, 1947, 14 mins)

Distributor: Národní filmový archiv and Janus Films

Part of The Weird and Wonderful World of Czech Animation