Surviving Life DVD & Download

Jan Svankmajer describes his latest film as a psychoanalytical comedy:

Eugene leads a double life - one real, the other in his dreams. In real life he has a wife called Milada; in his dreams he has a young girlfriend called Eugenia. Sensing that these dreams have some deeper meaning, he goes to see a psychoanalyst, Dr. Holubova, who interprets them for him, with the help of some argumentative psychoanalytical griping from the animated heads of Freud and Jung.

As we gradually piece together Eugene's life story, his dream-world love affair with Eugenia is thwarted by the appearance of other characters, including her little boy Peter, her extortionist ex-husband, and a filthy old woman who keeps warning him not to harm her. Soon after, we discover she is expecting Eugene's child - to the dismay of Dr. Holubova, who believes Eugenia is in fact his anima. And getting your anima pregnant is worse than incest...

Also available from Jan Svankmajer are Lunacy and Conspirators of Pleasure

The DVD includes:

3 background documentaries, 45 minutes in total

2 trailers, alternative ending, photogallery, 5.1 sound

Subtitles in English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian

After studying at the Institute of Industrial Arts and the Marionette Faculty of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the 1950s, Jan Švankmajer, now 77, started working as a theatre director, chiefly in association with the Theatre of Masks and the Black Theatre. He first experimented with film-making after becoming involved with the mixed-media productions of Prague's Lanterna Magika Theatre.

He began making short films in 1964 (released as a definitive anthology by the BFI), and continued working in the same medium for over twenty years, when he finally achieved his long-held ambition to make the extraordinary and much loved feature film based on Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND (ALICE, 1988). His subsequent acclaimed features include FAUST, CONSPIRATORS OF PLEASURE, LITTLE OTIK and LUNACY.

He has also exhibited drawings, collages and 'tactile sculptures', many of which were produced in the mid-1970s, when he was temporarily banned from film-making by the Czech authorities. He has been a member of the Prague Surrealist Group since 1969.

Filmography

1964 -- The Last Trick

1965 -- J.S.Bach - Fantasy in G Minor

1965 -- A Game with Stones

1966 -- Punch and Judy

1966 -- Et Cetera

1967 -- Historia Naturae

1968 -- The Garden

1968 -- The Flat

1969 -- Picnic with Weismann

1969 -- A Quiet Week in the House

1970 -- The Ossuary

1970 -- Don Juan

1971 -- Jabberwocky

1972 -- Leonardo's Diary

1973 - 9 -- The Castle of Otranto

1980 -- The Fall of the House of Usher

1982 -- Dimensions of Dialogue

1982 -- Down to the Cellar

1983 -- The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope

1987 -- Alice (FEATURE film)

1988 -- Virile Games

1988 -- Another Kind of Love

1989 -- Meat Love

1989 -- Darkness-Light-Darkness

1989 -- Flora

1990 -- The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia

1992 -- Food

1994 -- Faust (feature film)

1996 -- Conspirators of Pleasure (feature film)

2000 -- Otesánek (Little Otik) (feature film)

2005 -- Lunacy (feature film)

2010 – Surviving Life(feature film)

‘Dazzling the eye with animation that falls somewhere between ‘South Park’, ‘The Yellow Submarine’ and Terry Gilliam’s work for the Pythons, this manages to be Svankmajer’s most poignant and fully-formed feature to date...

‘Confirms Svankmajer as a master filmmaker and knocks films like ‘Inception’ and ‘The Matrix’ into a cocked hat. Just dreamy!’

David Jenkins Time Out

‘Words and pictures conspire to creating an utterly plausible world’ * * * * Evening Standard

‘An interesting and subversive comic fantasy reminiscent of Terry Gilliam.’ The Guardian

★★★★‘One of the most imaginative and visually arresting films of the year. Essential viewing.’  Little White Lies

‘Reassuringly off-kilter from the get-go… In the world of dreams, anything goes and this serves as the perfect catalyst for Švankmajer to engage with some of his strangest material to date.’ Little White Lies

‘Švankmajer’s joyous affinity for the bizarre is so captivating and infectious that it commands attention from the off. Its unparalleled visual style and subtly odd comic touches are a stark reminder of its director’s loopy genius and the welcome return of a master in his field.’ * * * * Little White Lies

‘The return of one of animation’s most unique talents… Comic, touching and often downright bizarre. Nothing else quite matches it.’ * * * * Little White Lies

‘Weird and even more wonderful… Possibly the oddest thing Design Week has ever seen. Naturally, we loved it’’ Design Week

‘Worth the admission price for its mad-hatter visuals alone.’ * * * * Visit London

‘If Lewis Carroll, Franz Kafka and Salvador Dali were a collective of filmmakers, their output may well resemble the absurd visions of Czech animator Jan Svankmajer. After a five year break, the surrealist wizard returns with a beautifully crafted animated fantasy.’ * * * * Visit London

‘Those new to the bizarre world of Jan Svankmajer will be in for a treat.’ * * * * Visit London

‘A film which sucks you into its universe… You will want to watch it again almost immediately.’ The Film Pilgrim

‘Svankmajer is peerless. His oeuvre over the last 30 years is without precedent or equal.’ AnOther magazine

‘The undisputed leading light of contemporary surrealism.’ AnOther magazine

“One of the most inventive and memorable films of 2011.’ * * * * * Cine Vue

For film bookings please contact Colin Burch at Verve Pictures — [email protected]. Press resources are on the Press page.