Svenkmajer's "Alice" and "Little Otik" have been part of the mainstream indie subconcious for a couple of decades now (you know, as the movies you're supposed to have seen and loved/appreciated/got) but his surrealist shorts are just as amazing/disturbing/influential (I'm looking at you Terry Gilliam).
Today, we're going to look at "Dimensions of Dialogue", where Jan Svankmajer presents three different wordless, abstracted visions of human communication and interaction, and the various outcomes that can result from such encounters. This is a darkly funny, but essentially pessimistic, tryptich on the impossibility of true communication.
BONUS: If you have time, spend some energy looking up "Meat Love" and "Table Manners" and "Punch and Judy" on youtube, and close out with this video he did for Hugh Cornwell's "Another Kind of Love"
God loves a cheerful giver.
1. Originality becomes derivitive through consumption
2. Intimacy temporarily erases dualism before emphasizing difference until ultimately the dichotomy destroys itself
3. Debate reveals underlying truths uniting opposites unless we fail to listen, then it degrades to rhetorical masturbation.
Fuck, it all would be so depressing if it didn't just remind me how much I love the "Sledgehammer" video.
Svankmajer's films are perfect to play on mute with music going...it'll beat any visualizer, and always matches the beat.
I have "backups" of all the videos on the Collected Shorts of Jan Svankmajer...should I upload and give a link?
punch and judy is still my fav
You didn't mention Conspirators of Pleasure!!! The best Svankmajer film IMHO.