The IndieLisboa retrospective covers Švankmajer's entire oeuvre, which includes more than thirty films, valued for their richness and diversity, combining live action and animation, drawing, clay, collage, and puppetry. Jan Švankmajer, whose work has influenced filmmakers such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam and the Quay brothers, is known for his total creative freedom, ignoring audience taste. In his animations, the artist often uses the stop motion technique, which helps him to uncover the hidden nature of the most ordinary objects and reveal their secrets.

Švankmajer's highly original artistic style has developed over many years during which he has been inspired by various artists including Paul Klee, or surrealists Max Ernst, René Magritte, and Giorgio de Chirico. Arcimboldo's famous imaginative portrait heads inspired A Game with Stones, Historia Naturae, and Dimensions of Dialogue, one of his most acclaimed short films, and the winner of the Golden Bear at the 1983 Berlinale.

Soon after making his first feature-length film, the surrealist dark fantasy Alice, which won him the Grand Prix for the best feature film in Annecy, Švankmajer devoted himself exclusively to feature films. In 1994 he made Faust, a modern interpretation of the Faust myth, and in 1996 the black comedy Conspirators of Pleasure, a parody of the world of sexual perversions and erotic fetishes.

The philosophical horror Lunacy, inspired by the personality of the Marquis de Sade and two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe premiered in 2005. Jan Švankmajer's latest feature film is 2018's Insect, based on the play by the Čapek brothers, with a reference to Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

Švankmajer's most recent film to date, the documentary Kunstkamera (2022) is dedicated to the artist's strong lifelong interest in curiosity collecting, folk puppetry, naive folk art, African and Polynesian masks and fetishes, and art brut, and it was screener at IFF Rotetrdam.

List of films:

FEATURE FILMS

Alice, Jan Švankmajer, 1987, 84′
Faust, Jan Švankmajer, 1994, 90′
Conspirators of Pleasure, Jan Švankmajer, 1996, 75′
Little Otik, Jan Švankmajer, 2000, 127′
Lunacy, Jan Švankmajer, 2005, 118′
Surviving Life, Jan Švankmajer, 2010, 105′
Insect, Jan Švankmajer, 2018, 98′
The Alchemical Furnace, Adam Ol’ha/Jan Daňhel, doc., 2020, 117′
Kunstkamera, Jan Švankmajer, doc., 2022, 51′

SHORT FILMS

The Last Trick, Jan Švankmajer, 1964, 10′
Johann Sebastian Bach: Fantasy in G minor, Jan Švankmajer, 1965, 8′
A Game with Stones, Jan Švankmajer, 1965, 8′
Punch and Judy, Jan Švankmajer, 1966, 10′
Et Cetera, Jan Švankmajer, 1966, 8′
Historia Naturae (Suita), Jan Švankmajer, 1967, 9′
The Flat, Jan Švankmajer, 1968, 13′
Picnic with Weissmann, Jan Švankmajer, 1969, 13′
A Quiet Week in the House, Jan Švankmajer, 1969, 13′
Don Juan, Jan Švankmajer, 1970, 30′
The Ossuary, Jan Švankmajer, 1970, 10′
Jabberwocky, Jan Švankmajer, 1971, 12′
Leonardo’s Diary, Jan Švankmajer, 1972, 10′
Castle of Otranto, Jan Švankmajer, 1973, 17′
The Fall of the House of Usher, Jan Švankmajer, 1980, 15′
Dimensions of Dialogue, Jan Švankmajer, 1982, 11′
Down to the Cellar, Jan Švankmajer, 1982, 14′
The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope, Jan Švankmajer, 1983, 15′
Virile Games, Jan Švankmajer, 1988, 15′
Hugh Cornwell: Another Kind of Love, Jan Švankmajer, 1988, 4′
Meat Love, Jan Švankmajer, 1989, 1′
Darkness/Light/Darkness, Jan Švankmajer, 1989, 10′
Flora, Jan Švankmajer, 1989, 20”
The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia, Jan Švankmajer, 1990, 10′
The Food, Jan Švankmajer, 1992, 17′

The IndieLisboa Festival has also selected several new and older Czech animated films for children. Among them are Philippe Kastner's Dede is Dead, which was awarded an honorable mention in the Generation Kplus section at this year's Berlinale, Nina Rybárová and Tomáš Rybár's short film Criss Cross, which combines animation with cross-stitch embroidery, and two films from Bionaut - the Czech-Slovak co-production My Name is Edgar and I Have a Cow by Filip Diviak and the film for the youngest viewers Our Piggy: Blocks by Jaromír Plachý. The last film in the festival programme is the animated short film Swimming Pool by Alexandra Májová from 2010.