''The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer'' is a 1984 British surreal short

stop-motion Stop-motion (also known as stop frame animation) is an animation, animated filmmaking and special effects technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appe ...

film by the

Brothers Quay Stephen and Timothy Quay ( ; born June 17, 1947) are American identical twin brothers and stop-motion animators who are better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They received the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for t ...

, an homage to the influential short film maker

Jan Švankmajer Jan Švankmajer (born 4 September 1934) is a Czech retired film director, animator, writer, playwright and artist. He draws and makes free graphics, collage, ceramics, tactile objects and asse ...

. The film was released on 20 June 1984, in the United Kingdom.

Summary

It is structured as a series of little lessons on perception at

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

in a form of a puppet simulacrum of Svankmajer, whose head is an opened book, to a doll whose head the masters empties of dross and refills with a similar open book.

Availability

Available as part of the Phantom Museums DVD collection of Quay Brothers shorts. The short film was released, alongside other shorts by the Quay Brothers, on May 14, 2020, on

The Criterion Channel The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of arthouse film distributor ...

References

External links

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The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer
' on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

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Excerpt on Vimeo
Films directed by the Brothers Quay 1984 films 1984 animated short films Stop-motion animated short films Jan Švankmajer Films set in Prague British animated short films 1980s British films {{1980s-UK-film-stub