Jan Svankmajer’s FAUST Trailer

Available for rental in Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema starting Friday, September 18 (1994) Czech animator-extraordinaire Jan Svankmajer reinterprets the Faustian legend using puppets, clay, and various other kinds of 3-dimenstional animation in his acclaimed follow-up to ALICE, his celebrated 1988 adaptation of Lewis Carroll. The filmmaker’s dark vision begins on the streets of Prague as an ordinary commuter seals his fate by accepting a handbill as he exits the subway. Svankmajer draws upon texts by Goethe, Marlow, and Grabbe, as well as popular folk interpretations. Huge marionettes, evil chickens, a flaming, riderless cart, and a clay fetus grown in a test tube that retains its baby body while its head ages… all figure into Svankmajer’s latest pact with the devil. A KIMSTIM RELEASE