Athanor: The Alchemical Furnace (2020)

Czech surrealist filmmaker Jan Švankmajer to be honored at Riga International Film Festival

Legendary Czech director Jan Švankmajer will be honored with a retrospective at this year’s Riga International Film Festival, organizers revealed this morning. Tickets for this year’s festival, which will take place in the Latvian capital from October 17-27, are now on sale.

With the Švankmajer retrospective, the Riga International Film Festival will pay tribute to both the director, who turns 90 on September 4, as well as the 100th anniversary of surrealism itself. The artistic and cultural movement began around 1920, but went official with the publication of two rival surrealist manifestos in October 1924.

The festival’s Švankmajer retrospective will take place over the weekends of October 19-20 and 26-27 as part of the In Kino Veritas section at the main festival venue, the historic Splendid Palace. Additionally, a documentary film about Švankmajer’s life and work will be screened as part of the festival online.

“Similar to Luis Buñuel’s razor in An Andalusian Dog, Švankmajer provocatively split the confines of reality,” In Kino Veritas curator Dārta Ceriņa states through a press release. “His films, created in the political and historic soil of Eastern Europe and the Czech Republic, offered up dreamscapes, nightmares, fairytales, and skits, and created an uneasy, hard to define opposition to the political regime.”

“Currently, surrounded by the anonymous stream of online images, only the odd one among us knows that the scenes of objects, clay or mixed-technique animation are created by Švankmajer. This is why the festival invites the viewers to discover the largest continent of film history – the unconscious – and make the experience personal.”

Švankmajer’s career spans 60 years and multiple political regimes, which are often a target in his works. He was banned from filmmaking by communist authorities in the 1970s but continued to work in the Czech film industry as a set designer.

His short and feature-length films include numerous filmmaking styles, often combining live action with stop-motion animation. Filmmakers from across the globe have cited Švankmajer as a direct influence in their work, including Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, and Shane Acker.

This year’s Riga International Film Festival will screen some of Švankmajer’s best-known works as well as his early experimental films, many of which will be seen in Latvia for the very first time. Films screened include the features Alice and Conspirators of Pleasure as well as short works such as Flat, Meat Love, The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia, and Food.

In addition to Švankmajer’s works as director, Athanor: The Alchemical Furnace, a 2020 documentary covering his life and work directed by Adam Oľha and Jan Daňhel, will also screen both during the festival and online.

The Riga International Film Festival was established in 2014 and has quickly become one of the most prestigious film festivals in the Baltics, alongside the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and the Vilnius International Film Festival. Tickets for the Švankmajer retrospective are now on sale through the festival website, while a full program will be announced on September 17. This year’s festival promises award-winning features from Rotterdam, Berlin, Cannes, Venice, and other film festivals worldwide.

Lead image: Švankmajer in Athanor: The Alchemical Furnace (2020)

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Jason Pirodsky

Jason Pirodsky has been writing about the Prague film scene and reviewing films in print and online media since 2005. A member of the Online Film Critics Society, you can also catch his musings on life in Prague at expats.cz and tips on mindfulness sourced from ancient principles at MaArtial.com.

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