On Saturday, The Guardian published what is by a very considerable margin the longest and most eloquent piece on Jan Švankmajer’s work ever seen in the pages of a British newspaper. In the print version, Marina Warner’s article occupied the double-page centre spread of the Review section, illustrated with three large stills, but the full text is available here, and is well worth reading.
I’m particularly grateful to her for finding the space to give the new BFI DVD set a plug – not least because I had to hand-deliver an advance copy to her at incredibly short notice three weeks or so ago:
Švankmajer has been a cult figure for a while, but his works are still difficult to find. Happily, the complete short films have now been collected by the BFI in a three-disc set; 26 extraordinary works so far, they unfold his artistry and his preoccupations with rare richness, and have been annotated by an admiring group of critics and film historians. As for the major films, shamefully, only Little Otik (2000) and Lunacy (2005) are available on DVD in the UK. So this set of short films is a marvellous and invaluable collection.
She’s actually understated the shortage – Lunacy isn’t out on a British DVD either, though the Czech edition is 100% compatible with British players and televisions, and is fully bilingual (Czech-English) throughout.