Surviving Life

Revered as "the last card-carrying Surrealist, the maestro of dank whimsy and morbid tactility, the poet of mildew and autumnal rot...  an alchemist whose formula is Buñuel + Disney" (Village Voice), Czech animator Jan Švankmajer (Alice, Faust - SFF 1995) delivers yet another classic in a career spanning almost fifty years. Eugene (Vàclav Helsus) is a tired bureaucrat on the wrong side of middle age who discovers the woman of his dreams - in his dreams. He begins to spend more time sleeping, much to the dissatisfaction of his wife, and clandestinely engages a psychoanalyst in an attempt to understand his vivid new unreality. (Her walls are adorned with portraits of Freud and Jung that bicker over her interpretations!) Dipping into his own distinctive barrel of Eastern European humour, and combining live action with collage and stop-motion animation, Švankmajer embraces a more playful style here (naked women with chicken heads run amok!) that frequently evokes the work of Monty Python and Jan Lenica.

Australian Premiere