jan svankmajer...

Ive recently watched Svankmajers interpretation of faust. He mixes live action with claymation and human actors with marionettes and sometimes people inside the marionettes. These marionettes in themselves work on playful trickery creating a profoundand disturbing sense of lurking terror.

Svankmajer has to be one of the most unusual animators, he showcases a vivid and often disturbing imagination which can sometime feel very dreamlike.

He shows that his surrealism is one which functions similarly to allegory and parable. It's a different approach to the actual experiences of life. It is not mimetic, but rather expressive, in that it expresses what it feels like to live in certain situations and environments, and it uses fantastic elements to explore the ambiguous and complex forces which play on people, cultures, political structures, and even physical landscapes. By using suggestive imagery it achieves more than it would through didactic statement, because it allows multiple layers of meanings, offers no clear interpretation, and lets viewers apply the imagery to their perception of reality without dictating how they must do so.