* (restored)

 

There are mysteries that are so eerie and strange that they boggle the mind for days on end. The case of Elisa Lam is one of them. In February 2013, this 21-year-old student from Vancouver, Canada, was found dead inside the Cecil Hotel’s rooftop water tank in Los Angeles. The L.A. County Department of Coroner ruled the death “accidental due to drowning” and said no traces of drugs or alcohol were found during the autopsy. However, there is much more to the story than what is implied by police reports. The first piece of evidence that needs to be considered is an elevator surveillance tape that recorded Elisa’s behavior only a few moments before she lost her life.

 

 

The four-minute video posted on YouTube shows Elisa pressing all of the elevator buttons and waiting for it to move. Seeing that the elevator doors are not closing, starts behaving extremely bizarrely. Here’s the video.

 

 

At first, Elisa enters the elevator and apparently presses all of its buttons. She then waits for something to happen but, for some reason, the elevator door doesn’t shut. She starts to look around, as if she is expecting (or hiding from) someone. At 1:57, her arms and hands start moving in a very strange matter (almost not human) as she appears to be talking to someone, something … or nothing at all. She then walks away. The elevator door then shuts and appears to start working again.

Right after the events of the video, Elisa apparently gained access to the rooftop of the hotel, climbed to its water tank and, somehow, ended up drowning in it. Her body was found two weeks after her death, after hotel guests complained about the water’s taste and color. Incredible.

Seeing the surveillance footage, most people would conclude that she was under the influence of drugs. However, Elisa did not have a history of drug use and her autopsy concluded that no drugs were involved. When one looks at the context and the circumstances of this death, things become even more mysterious.

 

 

Built in the 1920s to cater to “businessmen to come into town and spend a night or two”, Cecil Hotel was quickly upstaged by more glamorous hotels. Located near the infamous Skid Row area, the hotel began renting rooms on a long-term basis for cheap prices, a policy that attracted a shiftier crowd. The hotel’s reputation quickly went from “shifty” to “morbid” when it became notorious for numerous suicides and murders, as well as lodging famous serial killers.

Now on death row, Richard Ramirez, labeled “the Nightstalker”, was living at the Cecil Hotel in 1985, in a top floor room. He was charged 14 dollars a night. In a building filled with transients, he remained unnoticed as he stalked and killed his 13 female victims. Richard Schave, said “He was dumping his bloody clothes in the Dumpster, at the end of his evening and returned via the back entrance.”

Jack Unterweger, was a journalist covering crime in Los Angeles for an Austrian magazine in 1991. “We believe he was living at the Cecil Hotel in homage to Ramirez,” Schave said. He is blamed with killing three prostitutes in Los Angeles, while being a guest at the Cecil.

In the 50’s and 60’s the Cecil was known as a place that people would go to jump out of one of the hotel’s windows to commit suicide.

Helen Gurnee, in her 50s, leaped from a seventh floor window, landing on the Cecil Hotel marquee, on October 22, 1954.

Julia Moore jumped from her eighth floor room window, on February 11, 1962.

Pauline Otton, 27, jumped from a ninth floor window after an argument with her estranged husband, on October 12, 1962. Otton landed on George Gianinni, 65, who was walking on the side walk, 90 feet below. Both were killed instantly.

There was also a murder of one of the residents. “Pigeon Goldie” Osgood, a retired telephone operator, known for protecting and feeding pigeons in a nearby park, was found dead in his ransacked room on June 4, 1964. He had been stabbed, strangled, and raped. The crime still remains unsolved.

Elisa Lam’s case is yet another sordid addition to the hotel’s history and can lead us to ask: “What the hell is wrong with that place”?

 

 

The story of Elisa Lam is eerily similar to the 2005 horror movie Dark Water. Dahlia, the main protagonist of the movie moves into an apartment building with her young daughter Cecilia. Both of these names are relevant. Black Dahlia is the nickname given to Elizabeth Short, a woman who was the victim of a gruesome murder in 1947 – one that appeared to be particularly ritualistic. The case was never solved. According to LA Observed, it is rumored that Black Dahlia was at Cecil Hotel right before she lost her life.

In the movie, the daughter’s name, Cecilia, is, obviously, quite similar to the name Cecil Hotel. After moving into her apartment, Dahlia notices dark water leaking from the ceiling in her bathroom. She ultimately discovers that a young girl named Natasha Rimsky drowned in the building’s rooftop water tank, which caused the water to turn black. The owner of the apartment building knew about this fact but refused to take action. Elisa Lam’s body was in the water tank for over two weeks, causing hotel guests to complain about foul tasting “black water”.

The ending of the movie is also eerily relevant: The apartment buildings elevator malfunctions and the ghost of Cecilia’s mother braids her hair. Is Elisa Lam’s death one of those ritualistic murders that are synchronistically mirrored in a Hollywood movie?

 

 

Shortly after the discovery of Elisa Lam’s body, a deadly outbreak of tuberculosis occurred in Skid Row, near Cecil Hotel. You probably won’t believe the name of the test kit used in these kinds of situations: LAM-ELISA. That is hardcore synchronicity.

 

 

In one theory making the rounds on the internet, Elisa Lam never existed. According to the website Godlike Productions, known for its championing of lunatic fringe theories, “The LAPD put out the video, because her Facebook pictures didn’t look like her. It wasn’t her. Look up whoiselisalam.org. Look at the Illuminati card Eliza. Her FB page was started by military.”

 

 

LA authorities ruled in June 2013 that Elisa Lam’s death was accidental and that she was “probably bi-polar”. That being said, some questions remain unanswered. How did Elisa, who was obviously not in her right mind, end up in the hotel’s water tank, an area that is difficult to access? Here’s a video showing the water tank area.

 

 

As the reporter states in the video, the rooftop area is protected by an alarm system and the water tank is difficult to reach. How did Elisa reach that area? Also, how did she close the water tank lid?

As is usually the case for strange deaths, authorities have been incredibly secretive and non-transparent during this investigation. What truly happened here? Why are there so many strange coincidences? Why was Elisa Lam acting so strange in the elevator? Was there a ritualistic aspect to this death? Why is the Cecil Hotel a hotbed for these kinds of stories? Is there some paranormal stuff going on there involving dark entities? The mystery appears to be whole and authorities do not seem to be wanting to probe further.

 

 

A YouTube user recently claimed that the Elisa Lam CCTV footage had been slowed down and possibly edited. He makes a case that the tape was tampered with and that we have not yet seen the full extent of Elisa Lam’s final video appearance.

 

 

Obviously, more investigation would have to be conducted to confirm whether or not the video was actually slowed down and edited. The timestamp jump certainly does seem suspicious. But then again, everything in a conspiracy theory must, by definition, seem suspicious.

 

 

Comments

Netti · 3 weeks ago
its clearly ritual murder. God save us all from this evil.

Kathleen · 3 weeks ago
Habitual, grave sin opens one to the influence of the demonic.

The influence of the demonic is not limited to green pea soup spitting full possession. There are various degrees and types of diabolical influence.

Influence or infestation of these various types can impact entire families, over multiple generations, or buildings.

Lafite · 3 weeks ago
First of all, she pushed all floor buttons for the ghosts. As to the elevator door remaining open, it’s because there were too many ghosts in the elevator leading to the door not closing because it was overloaded, and her being squeezed to a corner of the elevator proves this point. Hopping and gesticulating by the door was her discussing the situation with the ghosts, asking some of the ghosts to get out of the elevator to reduce the weight. From this we can see, there will always be things that man’s science is unable to explain, or there really is another dimension. This is purely one’s point of view, if you don’t like it, don’t read it.

Patricia · 3 weeks ago
I don’t know as I saw the elevator and the I sworn I saw the devil.if you look well and if you could see his horns inside the elevator its so weird that girl .something somebody possessed that girl’s body.

Skegeeace · 3 weeks ago
Totally unnerving. Perhaps she was a ritual sacrifice infected with TB and dumped into the water tanks to contaminate others. Surely, it would spread all over the place- especially among the poor with their low-immunity from malnutrition and lack of access to health care/vaccination. (Skid Row is traditionally home to the poor, right?) And her NAME…being the reverse of the name of the TB testing kits?! If that’s true, I definitely smell satan worshipers. They do lots of things in reverse for their black magick rituals.

People, your only defense is Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit. If you’re not under their protection, then you’re susceptible to evil attacks. Some aren’t that extreme, but this one clearly was.

Kim · 3 weeks ago
The way she moved her hands reminded me of the way my bearded dragon “waves” her arms. Same wrist-down, flat palm, fingers-up shape. That was the first thing I thought of. I don’t think that is relevant at all, but it startled me how much she resembled a reptile with those movements.

Jordan · 3 weeks ago
When she pressed all the buttons, she obviously hit the “Door Hold” button as well. She doesn’t have her glasses on. Come on people…

Dylan Barrett · 3 weeks ago
I wonder if the hotel staff are in on it, the fact that it seems as if the person doing security could see her on camera and probably hear her and held the doors for staff to get there…. the staff knew not to walk in front of the cameras….. there is no mention of why she was there or who she was with….. or why no one mentioned the taste or colour of the water on the news report….. if her clothes were off were they piled on the ground, thrown about the roof, missing entirely…. I wonder if some of the other deaths were of people who found out that staff might be running some secret underground stuff to keep them in business…. I woman staying there hears a lady scream finds out staff are helping elitist people commit ritualistic murders…. lady gets thrown out the window……. the whole thing is written up by crooked cops and payed off coroners as a suicide….. Elisa Lam was probably drugged and prepped for a ritualistic murder till she escaped and staff needed to keep things under control without getting caught……..

Syrus · 3 weeks ago
Last time a lightning bolt struck one of the Illuminati’s messengers while he was en route with their world domination plans, which were immediately found by the local authorities and that directly led to the group’s official dissolution. I wonder what more it could take this time to really shut the Cabal down. I don’t like these people.

aggelos · 3 weeks ago
Drowning is also used in ritual sacrifices, ie whitney houston…

Yaz · 3 weeks ago
I’m surprised that everyone has failed to see the most creepy part of the entire video!!!

2:57: the elevator door closes (and seems to work fine)
3:13: the elevator opens on a DIFFERENT FLOOR!!!, the wallpaper is different!

It seems like perhaps “something” in the elevator perhaps went UP a few floors, to possibly complete the sacrifice!!
Notice that it took almost 20 seconds, which means that the elevator either went far down or far up. It most probably is far up. I bet that if the elevator had gone down it would be at the reception floor – not likely after an incident like that. It was going UP!

And also, no one had pressed the elevator button, since no person was present on the other floor. That means that something inside the elevator pressed on something, perhaps what floor “something” wanted to get to.

Is it just me or is there a dark entity in the center of the entire video??

max · 3 weeks ago
I’m sorry but I am far more disturbed that people were drinking cadaver juice for weeks than the actually mystery of her death. That is vile.

 

 

*

p.s. RIP Bela Tarr. Also, just to say that I have no idea why the blog had a black background yesterday for those who saw it that way. Nothing seemed amiss on my end, and it looked totally normal to me and to others whom I asked to check. Hopefully it was a weird fluke, and the blog will have its usual white background today. If not, I’ll look into it more fully. ** Uday, How are they today? (Your legs.) I’ll look into Eva Švankmajerová’s writing. I had no idea. Favorite Švankmajer? I guess ‘Little Otik’, ‘Alice’, and I like ‘Conspirators of Pleasure’ although his biggest fans seem not to? ** Lucas, When I was a kid, there were so many puppet-based children’s TV shows. And they were so weird sometimes. I guess it’s obvious why they faded out with the birth of CGI and stuff, but they were almost psychedelically melancholy at times. Last summer actually wasn’t bad at all. Just three or four days of misery, and the rest was fairly and spookily mild-ish. Using the nic patch helps a bit with the brain fog. A bit. ** jay, Hi. The Quays’ stuff has always kind of irked me, I don’t know why. As impressive as it obviously is. I do love their live action film ‘Institute Benjamenta’, and I wish they’d made more of those. I fully believe that Proust is incredible and singular and mind-blowing and everything. And I don’t know why I have a punk resistance to him, or why I’m proud of that. It’s snowing here right now, and super cold. And my Adidas are like sponges. Stay cozy. ** Laura, Did I recommend ‘A Boy’s Own Story’? How strange of me. Glad you liked it in any case. Oh gosh, I wouldn’t know how to begin to point you at the Verlaine scholars. I started voraciously studying Rimbaud and Verlaine by proxy when I was fifteen and did so for years, and I don’t have records. If your gut leads you to make that Rimbaud association, then go for it. As someone who in my small way has been the subject of many essays and three academic books about my work and me, the majority of them taking vague tidbits from my life and jumping to completely false conclusions that are presented as facts because the authors want their take to pop and draw attention, I’m immensely suspicious of academics’ exploitation of that material for their own means, much less when a writer is long dead and their life is full of pre-internet, manipulatable mysteriousness, and when they and the people who actually knew them are not alive to present the actual facts. I prefer ‘we’ll never know’. I hope your meds are ambient now. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yep, yep. ** Bill, The shorts are pretty spicy at their best. Yeah, as I was saying up above, no clue as to why the blog went dark for some people yesterday. There’s no visible code to explain it. Strange. Yes, excellence about the New Juche reprints! ** Steeqhen, Ace: your newfangled hair. I don’t know, maybe ‘Little Otik’, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is fun, … What VPN do you use? I need to get a new one, and I’m kind of lost. I predict your pre-trip anxiety will dissipate as soon as you’re sitting in the transportation vehicle’s chair. But you tell me. ** Carsten, Hey. One of the great things about being an anarchist is that ownership = power is automatically debunked. Thanks for the pdf. Everyone, You can read a new poem by Carsten entitled ’42: To an Old Ford Bought at Auction’ if you click this and check out the new issue of the lit zine Turtle Island Poetry. ** Dev, Hi! If you liked ‘Alice’ you’ll probably be at least charmed by his other stuff. Is that how Kanopy works? Strange and impractical. King cake = Galette de Roi, right? Are they exactly the same thing, do you know? I’m scouting out the best GdRs in Paris right now. ** Vincent, Hi. Happy you’re good. Happy I’m good too. Take care. ** HaRpEr //, That sounds kind of pleasant. I think the young actress did another thing or two, but not much. I remember and loved that dialogue exchange too. No, the weird new look of the blog yesterday was some kind of strange accident. Hopefully gone now. I think it would get gimmicky rather quickly. ** Steve, Okay, projectr.tv is something at least. Again, yeah, no clue as to why the blog decided to look gloomy to some of y’all yesterday. ** nat, Hey. Yeah, complete accident on the ‘new’ look. Once was enough, I think. ‘The blurry cusp of either being bullshit or genius’: exciting enough for me. ‘Tokyo Xtreme Racer’: Huh, okay. I’m fairly shit at racing games, but minimalist is a lure, for sure. I’ll see if I can test it or something. My apartment its just barely warm enough to not have to wear a coat while doing anything. Grateful. Prayers re: your heater. ** Right. Today you have another opportunity to wrap your mind around the eternal mystery that is Elisa Lam if you feel like it. See you tomorrow.

* (restored)

 

‘If one were to place Jan Švankmajer in a schemata which might signal a point of access to his work, it might be as someone who anticipated the low-rent, anti-technology, quasi-documentary suggestiveness of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and coupled it with the tactility and cinematic bravura of Dario Argento’s more coherent visual ideas. This significantly undervalues the distinctiveness of Švankmajer’s approach, of course, but points up an important tension at the heart of his work between his conception of “fantastic documentary” and the fundamental principles of “militant surrealism.”

‘Animation readily facilitates this co-existence because its intrinsic artifice effectively creates an ontological equivalence in all aspects of the textual apparatus, imbuing it with the simultaneous capacity to both amplify meanings and imperatives in the materials used and images constructed, while also potentially diluting their significance by working as a model of expression which in enunciating its illusionism offers the possibility of “innocence” and “distanciation.” Simply, this is one of the reasons why animated films—from Disney cartoons to Japanese animé—can be both viewed as conservatively “mainstream” and subversively “left-field” depending upon how they are received and interpreted. The issue underpinning this, of course, remains animation’s enduring identity (and burden) as “children’s entertainment.”

‘Švankmajer refuses this ghetto, however, not merely through the ways in which he uses the free, and in some ways, unregulatable language of animation, but in the way he perceives “the child.” He suggests, “I’m not at all sure that any work of art is unsuitable for children. When children are confronted by something they can’t understand, [they engage with it] so that it works by analogy, or they simply reject it and carry on as before. Adults have a very distorted idea of a child’s world; they are crueller, more animalistic, than we like to admit.

‘The principles of desire live on in a child, who still hasn’t been domesticated by the world; its imagination is that much freer.” It is clear here that in suggesting there are no aesthetic boundaries that a child may not cross, Švankmajer is already challenging the socially and legally determined parameters of what is, and what is not suitable for children. In this respect, too, he signals modes of transgression which may be understood as the necessary imperatives of the artist in the facilitation of exploring new ideas, and the rejection of the restrictions of “citizenry” during that process.

‘The “horror” here resides in the recognition that humankind is fundamentally driven by obsessive and compulsive needs and desires, often rooted in childhood anxieties, and played out in dream-states. Švankmajer “frightens” by prompting recognition of transgression, and by physicalising alternative perspectives. Švankmajer contemporises and materialises the documentation of his agit-scares through the “fabrication” of his mise-en-scène, noting that “Animation can bring the imagery of childhood back to life and give it back its credibility,” adding “The animation of objects upholds the truth of our childhood.”‘ — Paul Wells, Kinoeye

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Jan Svankmajer Official Website
Jan Svankmajer Fan Page
The Jan Svankmajer Home Page
Jan Svankmajer page @ Facebook
‘The Decalogue of Jan Švankmajer’
Jan Svankmajer’s ‘Little Otik’ Diary
‘Jan Švankmajer: Animated Self-Portrait’
Jan Svankmajer interviewed @ Electric Sheep
Book: ‘The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer: Dark Alchemy’
Jan Svankmajer DVDs

 

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General

The Brothers Quay ‘The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer’ — Watch it here

Jan Švankmajer – IFFR Big Talk

Jan.Svankmajer – J.S.Bach.Fantasia.in.G.Minor

Darkness Light Darkness (1990) by Jan Svankmajer

Hugh Cornwell Another Kind of Love [dir. Jan Švankmajer, 1988]

 

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Interview
by Wendy Jackson

 

Would it be bold to say that Conspirators of Pleasure is your most Surrealist film to date?

Jan Svankmajer: Conspirators is actually a film about liberation, and about gaining a freedom. It is not art, but a film. Just as, for example, André Breton would not say “Surrealistic painting”, he would say “Surrealism in painting”. In the same way, I speak of Surrealism in film. Surrealism is psychology, it is philosophy, it is a spiritual way, but it is not an aesthetic. Surrealism is not interested in actually creating any kind of aesthetic. It was drawn as an element from various different artists, but it does not exist.

How can something so prevalent in your work be non-existent?

JS: Surrealism does exist, but it is not an art form. To characterize Surrealism, you can say it is the Romantic movement of the 20th century. Each romantic period expresses three elements: love, freedom and poetry. Each generation is seeking their own artistic expressions according to the environment and the time period they live in. The Romanticism of the 21st century will ask the same question. It doesn’t matter whether that Romanticism will be Culturalism, or something else.

You are very versatile in your filmmaking and other art, with the use many different techniques. Can you tell me something about your process for determining which medium should be employed to communicate or express a particular idea?

JS: I always say that I basically make my work “to order”, by which I mean to my “inner order”. It is really inside me, what’s going to come out. The way I see it, each individual accumulates in his or her lifetime. That which accumulates inside him or her needs to find a way out. Basically, everybody can do that, but most people do not find a way of releasing it, they have certain blockage. There is no such thing as talent.

No such thing as talent? That is a bold statement.

JS: It’s very simple. The artist is able to reach their resources, and overcome the block. But a clerk who sits in the office, obviously, has his blockage and cannot. This so-called “professionalism”, is much more a matter of technique, or skill than creativity. You can see that in naive art, or folk art, if an individual wants to express him or herself, they find a way to do it if they really want to.

You grew up in a time of such oppression of creativity and self-expression. How is it that you are so “lucky” as to not have this block, that you are able to realize your potential to express yourself through art?

JS: It’s a difficult question to answer. I believe there is a lot to it, including family influences. Certain children are just very difficult to handle. I was one of these children (laughs). For example, all children can draw. Some of them retain this ability until adult age, while in other children the ability is subsequently killed.

Rightly, you are often referred to as the “alchemist” of film.

JS: Yes, alchemy is about trying to connect things that you cannot connect, that are “un-connectable”. Poetry is a parallel for alchemy, and alchemy is a parallel for poetry.

 

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13 of Jan Švankmajer’s 40 films

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Punch and Judy (1966)
‘Probably the most densely allusive, frenetically charged film ever made about puppets hitting each other, Jan Švankmajer’s Punch and Judy is pretty extraordinary. At their best his short films are as tightly structured as incantations, delivering a sequence of actions and a barrage of images that somehow add up to a perfectly arranged whole. That’s not to say that it’s easy or even possible to draw conclusions about what it means, what the conjuration of that incantation might be, and the lack of easy explanation for all of its imagery is unsettling. If I give a recap of the plot, it might all seem very simple. After a prologue in which a band of automaton monkeys introduce the opening titles before the curtain rises on the stage within the film. Mr Punch is caring for his guinea pig. His neighbour Joey (another stock character from the Punch and Judy stories – note that, despite the title, Judy, along with all the other characters, is nowhere to be seen) envies the guinea pig and tries to buy it. Mr Punch refuses every cash offer, and they settle the dispute with violence, each taking turns to stuff the other into a coffin. It all ends with both characters dead and boxed, while the guinea pig strolls away through a hole in the scenery.’ — Spectacular Attractions

the entirety

 

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Jabberwocky (1971)
‘The spanked arse that opens the film like the clapstick that marks the start of a kabuki performance is not the only similarity to Todd Haynes’ Superstar. Both films use dolls and their mutilation to explore the degradation of the subject in the process of socialisation. That is, dolls in both cases are made into metaphors for the ways people’s bodies are not their own, but the blank objects onto which are carved the pressures and injunctions of families and society. Svankmajer’s dolls start out as the innocent embodiments of childhood, playthings invested with life by the animation process. Quickly, their innocence is polluted, and they are put to work in a series of actions that knock them into submissive shape. Birthed out of the inert body of a larger doll, they are installed in a house that spins them round and spits them out to be ground into food for more dolls. They are ironed flat, boiled and baked to sustain a cannibalistic circle of stunted life and grotesque death.’ — Spectacular Attractions

the entirety

 

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The Fall of the House of Usher (1980)
‘Even without understanding the voiceover (in softly lulling Czech) Svankmajer’s film soaks up the mysterious gloom of Edgar Allen Poe’s gothic story of death, doppelgangers and the claustraphobic weight of history. Like the story, it’s the house, brooding in the dusky light, that is the main character in Svankmajer’s film, dominating the landscape of barren trees and pulsating from foundation to roof with doom. Freed from any pesky humans (or even puppet people) to carry the narrative, it’s also the atmospheric house that Svankmajer uses to tell the tale, in crumbling plaster moulding itself into tormented shapes, words appearing out of dead leaves, blank faces appearing in walls and a coffin silently, clunkily and apparently singlemindedly weaving its own way through the rooms. This short film might be the best unlikely example of Svankmajer’s belief in the memories of materials and objects, and in the power of animation to free those memories.’ — The Spectral Dimension

the entirety

 

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Dimensions of Dialogue (1982)
‘Divided into three separate dialogues entitled ‘Exhaustive Discussion,’ ‘Passionate Discourse’ and ‘Factual Conversation,’ Svankmajer indeed exhausts the subject of social interaction in this unbounded critique of human malfeasance. In the first dialogue, two anthropomorphized assemblages of food-stuffs and kitchen utensils respectively lurch towards one another with the latter devouring the former. In turn, this pattern is repeated when a collection of intellectual markers vies with the kitchen products destroying the returning collage with similarly ease. Next it is the now degraded food objects which sully the books, paints, etc., as though the two were mingling in some fictious trash bin. This process of disintegration continues with the resulting forms appearing closer and closer to the form of man himself.’ — Tativille

the entirety

 

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Alice (1988)
‘After more than two decades as a prolific director of short films, Alice became Švankmajer’s first venture into feature-length filmmaking. The director had been disappointed by other adaptations of Carroll’s book, which interpret it as a fairy tale. His aim was instead to make the story play out like an amoral dream. Alice appears to be in her bedroom when a taxidermically stuffed rabbit comes to life and breaks out of its glass case. Alice follows the rabbit through the drawer of a desk into a cavern. She subsequently falls through a bucket and seemingly down an elevator shaft. Wonderland itself is a mix of drab household-like areas with incongruous relationships of space and size. The Queen’s execution sentences are carried out by the White Rabbit with a pair of scissors. At the film’s end, Alice wakes in her room, discovers that the rabbit is still missing from his glass case, and finds a secret compartment where he keeps scissors. She ponders whether or not she will cut his head off. The film is ambiguous about whether this room is Alice’s real world or “Wonderland.”‘ — Wikipedia

Trailer

the entirety

 

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Meat Love (1989)
‘Meat Love is a short film directed and animated by Jan Švankmajer, released in 1989. It appears as a commercial in Švankmajer’s feature-length film Otesánek. It has also been shown on MTV. It depicts two slices of steak, personified as two individual beings with a consciousness, that become aware of each other and form a romantic relationship, showing the steaks dancing with one another. This soon leads to passionate love, exemplified by the steaks rolling around on a plate of flour, which can be seen to symbolise sexual intercourse. Their passion is killed, however, when the steaks are placed in a frying pan.’ — Marked Animation

the entirety

 

_________________________
The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (1990)
‘In 1990, the year after the “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia, Jan Svankmajer made The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia and subtitled it “A work of Agitprop.” As these titles plainly demonstrate, it is the most political of all his films, attempting an overview of his country’s history after the Second World War. It is commonly believed that overt political comment within a work can badly affect its artistic value. The complexity and sophistication of artistic language is too often weakened when faced with the simplicity of political vocabulary. Accordingly, from the standpoint of the work of art, the relationship between art and politics is extremely delicate. Despite this, Svankmajer made an explicitly political film. Did he sacrifice the artistic value? If so, to what end? And what significance does the film have to its creator? It is a film that reveals the characteristics of Jan Svankmajer the Militant Surrealist. Svankmajer recognizes that Stalinism in its many guises is just one symptom of contemporary civilization, a civilization he believes that art must attack at its roots. It seems that Svankmajer intends to continue the fight against the absurdities of the human beings by means of his surrealist art.’ — The Slavic Research Center

the entirety

 

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Faust (1994)
‘Svankmajer’s long awaited follow-up to his acclaimed Alice is an equally astounding version of the myth of Dr. Faustus. Merging live action with stop-motion and claymation animation, Svankmajer has created an unsettling universe presided over by diabolic life-sized marionettes and haunted by skulking human messengers from hell. Svankmajer’s Faust (movingly incarnated by one of the Czech Republic’s finest actors, Petr Cepek) is an ordinary, inquisitive everyman who, upon exiting a Prague subway station, is handed a map that draws him to his doom. Led to an abandoned theater he finds a copy of Goethe’s Faust, begins to read aloud, and unwittingly summons up a devil who offers him everything his heart desires in return for his soul. With breathtaking rapidity, Faust’s journey takes him to the tops of mountains, drops him in the middle of lakes, and sends him out onto the unsuspecting streets of Prague. Peopled with shape-changing demons and puppet versions of Goethe’s characters, Svankmajer’s tour-de-force is alternately hilarious and shocking, always unique, and ultimately unforgettable.’ — kino

Trailer

Excerpt

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)
‘Svankmajer’s newest over-the-brink creation is Conspirators of Pleasure, the absorbing story of an obsessive handful of hardcore sexual fetishists whose lives intersect and dance around one other in serendipitous fashion. Conspirators of Pleasure is an erotic film, although not in the ways that we usually think of eroticism on film. That is, while sexuality is the film’s subject, the titillation factor here is low. For the most part, the characters remain fully clothed throughout. Importantly, there is no sexual intercourse, per se. Nobody talks dirty, because there’s no dialogue at all. Like pornography, communication here is almost completely nonverbal. What’s most gratifying to these motley sensualists — even the married couple, who pursue their own desires separately — is self-gratification. The film itself begins methodically, cross-cutting from story to story and growing ever more complicated as each minute passes. Finally, it achieves its own sort of orgasm, as the stories cross and interconnect, reaching a delirious climax and then a comedown — a disturbing resolution in the best surrealist tradition.’ — deep focus

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Little Otik (2000)
‘With his latest feature, Little Otik, Svankmajer is poised to move out of the ghetto tag of animator and take his place as a cinema visionary who happens to use animation in his films. Little Otik is based on a Czech fairy tale about a childless couple who adopt a tree stump that looks like a baby. As usual with fairy tales, any deviation from normal behavior triggers disaster — in this case the stump comes to life, grows huge, and starts murdering and eating everybody and everything in its path. Svankmajer, who’s credited with story, screenplay, and direction, uses this narrative as a springboard for a genre-busting masterpiece about the perils of parenthood and what can happen to those who don’t leave well enough alone with the status quo nature has determined.’ — Morphizm

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Lunacy (2005)
‘The latest provocation from surrealist master Jan Svankmajer is loosely based on two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and inspired by the works of the Marquis de Sade. In nineteenth-century France (albeit one full of deliberate anachronisms) a young man, Jean Berlot, is plagued by nightmares in which he is dragged off to a madhouse. On the journey back from his mother’s funeral he is invited by a Marquis he meets at lunch to spend the night in his castle. There Berlot witnesses a blasphemous orgy and a ‘therapeutic’ funeral. Berlot tries to flee but the Marquis insists on helping him conquer his fears and takes his guest to a surrealistic lunatic asylum where the patients have complete freedom and the staff are locked up behind bars. Described by Svankmajer himself in a prologue to the film as a ’philosophical horror film,” Lunacy combines live action and stop-motion, sex and violence, grand guignol terror and gallows humor, and a lot of animated meat.’ — zeitgeist films

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Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) (2010)
‘Eugene, an aging man, leads a double life: one real – the waking life he spends in the company of his wife of many years, Milana – and the other in his dreams, his sleeping hours being devoted to a recurring evolving dream of a beautiful young woman, Evgenia. Seeking to perpetuate his dream life, he goes to see a psychoanalyst, who attempts to provide an ongoing interpretation of his experiences. On the wall there are portraits of Freud and Jung, which become animated, alternately applauding, disapproving or fighting over her interpretations. The latest film from practising surrealist animator Jan vankmajer is a mix of cut-out animation from photographs and live action segments, combining real actors with their animated photographs, against black and white backdrops of photographed Czech buildings. This stylistic approach which, Svankmajer jokes during the films introduction, was due to lack of funds and saved on catering, provides freedom for imaginative collages, and humorous nods in the direction of some of surrealism’s familiar practitioners (Dalí, Ernst, Buñuel). Drawn directly from Svankmajer’s own dreams, the film is a complex, multilayered story about aging, love, sex, childhood, trauma and dreams, steeped in Freudian and Jungian analysis and injected with a healthy dose of perversity. As Eugene labors in different versions of reality, Svankmajer’s own deeply curious take on reality manifests in all its surrealist splendor.’ — RT

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Insects (2018)
‘Lesser works by great directors needn’t diminish long-standing reputations, so calling Jan Švankmajer’s “Insect” a disappointment in no way weakens the master’s position as a key proponent of surrealist cinema. However, there’s no getting around the fact that the film is a minor entry in a glorious career, despite having all the raw ingredients for a classic Švankmajer stew. Based on the 1922 satirical play “Pictures From the Insects’ Life” by the Čapek brothers, in which performers dressed as bugs expose the thin line between human and insect behavior, the film takes a meta approach, with the director himself acting as commentator (as in “Surviving Life”) to the story of a provincial amateur production.’ — Jay Weissberg

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Jan Svankmajer introduces his last feature film.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** jay, Yep, if a writer is suicidal, I’ll eventually showcase him, it appears. There’s one reason why I intend to never read Proust. My brain’s too flighty, I think. So nice that living in solitude is paying off and righting whatever wrongs. Your explanation of ‘Expedition 33’s’ reason for popularity makes total sense of course. Games are not unlike movies in that sense. I’m doing pretty good. Like you to some degree. Is it freezing there? It’s freezing here. ** Vincent, Hi, Vincent! No, I don’t know ‘Untold Night and Day’, but I’ll seek it out certainly. Thanks a lot. How are you? ** adrian, Hi. Sorry we’ll miss each other this time, but try to come again soon. ** Nicholas., Thanks about Mom. I think she’s a rather underrated character. Stanya’s amazing. We wrote the film hoping she’d agree to play that role, and she did. She makes these great videos, sometimes with Harry Dodge, that she stars in. They’re very worth hunting down if you like her. I like cumdumps. Or I guess theoretically since I don’t any personally that I know of. Probably ‘that I know of’ is the key there. Something good … If you say something is sky-colored rather than blue, you’re showing it more respect. ** Carsten, I’m aways very happy to have guest-posts under any circumstances, so thank you. What you wrote made me feel happy that I don’t own anything. Other than a car. I know of Turtle Island Press. I don’t know if that’s the same venture. Anyway, sounds cool, congrats. Assuming their thing is Gary Snyder influenced or homage-y? ** Lucas, What a great paragraph about that book! Cool about the party, and I think connecting with even one person is a lot. It’ll be nice here in April. Well, it’s always nice here exact maybe in August. Great. Mm, I think I’ll wait until the script is nailed down before I say too much about it because a lot can change in the final draft, you know? I should quit smoking too, but I won’t. But you should. Smoking sucks. ** _Black_Acrylic, Here too. Really cold, very brr. But pretty through a window. And we got a good four hours of snow yesterday, which is monumental for Paris these years. ** Dev, You know it. The book. Yeah, really something, right? I know for sure ‘PGL’ is on Kanopy and I think ‘Cattle’ is, but I’m not totally sure. No Kanopy in Paris for me to check. I hope the grind’s challenge has a lovely percolating aspect somehow. ** Steve, No, I haven’t seen the Ruiz. Luck at the repair shop. How weird that NYPL doesn’t give its adherents Kanopy access. What’s that about? ** darbz (⊙ _ ⊙ ), And miraculously my market suddenly restocked those falafels I like yesterday. When I get to NC, I’ll follow you around, trust me. I like(d) coke, but it’s not an important enough high to risk not getting back on your meds, that’s for sure. And you just proved you don’t need it. I’m 100% in favor of medication that works. Generalisations are bullshit, so being against, say, Adderall and Vyvanse across the board is just lazy thinking. Poems! xo. ** Steeqhen, Maybe Kanopy is a US only thing. That would make sense, I guess. I trust you made it out of the barber shop in one piece. You talked with Jack, nice. I still have never watched even two seconds of ‘Stranger Things’, but I might one of these days. Nothing against it. ** HaRpEr //, Yay re: your medicating! Strange can be a positive thing obviously. Can you feel anything yet? Garielle Lutz is definitely among the very tippy-top greatest sentence writers in the English language, if you ask me. So happy you saw and liked ‘‘Portrait d’une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles’. That girl/actress is so unbelievably good in it, right? Wow, I’m shocked that it’s in youtube. I’ve looked for it so many times. I’ll pass that along. Wow. Everyone, Harper has found a link whereby you can watch the very hard to see and very fantastic Chantal Akerman film ‘Portrait d’une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles’, and I super extremely highly recommend that you take this opportunity. Here. Thanks!!!! ** Laura, I know extremely little about the history of Iran, which I really should rectify. Some of the things you say Verlaine did are not factually proven and have been labeled as exaggerations by some knowledgeable Verlaine scholars. I can’t say that I agree with you that the split with Verlaine was a reason why Rimbaud quit writing. I think it’s an idea, but there are so many other speculations too. No one actually knows when he stopped writing, for one thing. I’m happy to embrace the unknowable. ‘Confusion is the truth’ is my lifelong motto. Yeah, Yury said ‘let me think about it’, and he hasn’t proposed an answer yet. I’ll nudge. Reading Reddit seems like enough. No presents, for me too, on the respective day over here, but who needs presents really? I may not be in the pink, but I’m close. Yeah, send whatever, just knowing that I’m way, way behind on things due to said illness and probably even slower than I usually famously am. Thank you! ** Right. Do any of you out there like Jan Švankmajer’s stuff? I hope so. See you tomorrow.