MEAT LOVE and other Jan Švankmajer shorts

Some of you asked where you could find the films we watched at the TRaC Kick Off. Ask and ye shall receive! Here are the two short films made by Czech filmaker Jan Švankmajer....

The first two YouTube videos I've posted are Dimensions of a Dialogue, Parts 1, 2 and 3 (1982):

this one is poor quality, but it's all I could find...


this is two-shorts-in-one - the 2nd and 3rd part of Dimensions of a Dialogue:


and everyone's favorite, Meat Love (1988):


Now those are different, eh?

We talked about what these experimental shorts are saying about communication. What happens when it breaks down? What happens when two sides say the same thing? (toothpaste is grinded by a pencil sharpener on a tongue, of course!) Even, what are the different meanings of the word 'communication'? The first two pieces are called "dimensions of a dialouge" so we are invited to interpret the work through that lens.

TRaC is all about communication: discussion, writing reviews and criticism, preparing questions for an artist.... what do these films say about us???

OR we could just think about the fact that those first videos were made start to finish by Švankmajer, by himself - all the filming, sculpting, editing, everything - and they took years to do. This 20 minutes of stop-motion was, yes, years in the making. Even the music of the films (he didn't write the scores) and sound effects (which he did) have their own strange dimension. (Fun fact: Švankmajer is known as the father of claymation. He's a god to all the Pixar guys). And though it's complex what he does, he deliberately uses household objects, showing them to us in new ways. We are disgusted sometimes and then find ourselves happy, for instance, when we see that Meat can turn on a radio and dance. Oh, happy Meat!

Many people consider Švankmajer do be a surrealist, his ideas stemming from the work of people like Salvador Dali, who painted The Persistence of Memory in 1931.

In case you want to dig deeper, here's Švankmajer's website: www.jansvankmajer.com ; his stats on the Internet Movie Database ; and his page on the New York Times, with a bio and several links to articles and REVIEWS!

Any other thoughts on these films or ideas?
Should we have more TRaC Meets and explore some other artists all together???
Feel free to leave a comment.

~eric