Jan Švankmajer
- Director
- Writer
- Production Designer
After studying at the Institute of Industrial Arts and the Marionette
Faculty of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the 1950s,
Jan Švankmajer started working as a
theatre director, chiefly in association with the Theatre of Masks and
the Black Theatre. He first experimented with film-making after
becoming involved with the multimedium productions of Prague's Lanterna
Magika Theatre. He began making short films in 1964, and continued
working in the same medium for over twenty years, when he finally
achieved his long-held ambition to make a feature film based on
Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland
(Alice (1988)). He has also
exhibited his drawings, collages and 'tactile sculptures', many of
which were produced in the mid-1970s, when he was temporarily banned
from film-making by the Czech authorities. He has been a card-carrying
member of the Prague Surrealist Group since 1969.
