Jan Švankmajer

Um, it really started, I was...

After the last film I made, I was really in, like, a deep dive on kinda Czech animation, um, and big fan of Jan Švankmajer, who did, like, a lot of mixed media stuff and had a long career and did features and shorts.

Um, and there's this great short that I hadn't seen until, I guess this was, like, 2022, um, which sort of loosely translates as Manly Games.

Sometimes it's translated as Virile Games.

Um, yeah, the film is really, was taking, again, from, from this French doc and from this Czech animation, both of which I think are really poking at their own kind of national character.

Um, again, the, uh, Vive le Tour is, is, is really, I mean, uh, it, it is celebrating the, the sort of icon of France and, uh, and the sort of French character, but it is also [chuckles] it's really jabbing at it.

Um, and in the same way that, you know, Jan Švankmajer's shorts are really sort of poking at, at, uh, the Czech Republic, especially under, uh, under the communists.

Um, and so in the same way, I wanted to...

And therefore, knowing about it makes them seem more cinematically knowledgeable.

What? Seriously? You haven't watched Jan Švankmajer's surrealist masterpiece, The Castle of Otranto? Do you hate yourself? Do you hate film? Do you hate the greatest things ever bestowed from the gods of cinema to be indulged by mere plebes below? So what is this book about? Well, prepare to be horrified.

Or, I don't know, fucking bored.

The first edition of The Castle of Otranto.