Cinema as surrealist tool: The films of Jan Svankmajer

The history of surrealist cinema has long been dominated by a focus on two films made over 80 years ago: Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, 1929) and L'Age d'Or (Luis Bunuel, 1930). As such these two films have become synonymous with surrealist cinema, setting the definitional terms for what surrealist cinema can do. This is in large part do to the paucity of films made by active members of surrealist groups. The work of Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer, however, requires us to expand the history and definitions of surrealist cinema. Since 1970, Svankmajer has been an active member of the Czech and Slovak Surrealist Group, and he has made dozens of films exploring his surrealist point of view. This dissertation examines Svankmajer's films as surrealist texts, arguing that his films present an epistemology of surrealism that centers around tactile knowledge and unstable embodiments. In so doing, I illustrate how cinema can be used as a tool for surrealist praxis.;In conducting my analysis, I draw primarily from the films themselves, using the phenomenological work of Vivian Sobchack and Jennifer Barker as inspiration for uncovering the mechanisms at work within a particular film without foreclosing that film's interpretive possibilities. I heavily supplement my analysis with surrealist writings (particularly the publications of the Czech and Slovak Surrealist Group), interviews and writings of Jan Svankmajer, and (where possible) production histories of the films. Moreover, because the unstable bodies that communicate Svankmajer's surrealist epistemology are bodies in motion, and even further many are stop-animated bodies, I found it necessary to bring theories of surrealism into dialogue with animation studies and performance studies. Through this combination of disciplinary perspectives, I was able to elucidate the non-discursive aspects of surrealist cinema, as well as its excessive, affective possibilities.