"Director: Jan Svankmajer"

• Little Otik | DVD | (16/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Based on a Czech folk tale Jan Svankmajer's most accessible film is the story of Karel and Bozena a married couple who long to have a baby. Whilst digging up an tree stump Karel decides to carve the roots into the image of a child; when his melancholy childless wife sees it her love brings the wooden form to life...

• Jan Svankmajer - The Short Films 1964-1992 | DVD | (28/05/2007) from £28.85   |  Saving you £1.14 (3.95%)   |  RRP £29.99

  A collection of animated shorts by Jan Svankmajer.

• Alice | Blu Ray | (23/05/2011) from £14.89   |  Saving you £5.10 (34.25%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Czech surrealist Jan vankmajer's Alice (1988) is a creepy and disturbing adaptaion of Lewis Carroll's perennial literary classic and perhaps the most faithful the original work. Combining a live-action Alice (Kristna Kohoutov) with a Wonderland filled with threatening stop-motion characters vankmajer's deliberately crude style of animation use of close-ups and rich design work lend the film a pervading sense of unease and a menacing dream-logic which marries a sly visual wit with piercing psychological insight.

• Lunacy | DVD | (25/06/2012) from £7.85   |  Saving you £8.14 (103.69%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The maestro of Czech animated surrealism, Jan Svankmajer, introduces Lunacy, suggesting that it draws on Poe and de Sade. Fans of his shorts will be delighted by the animated interludes, as beef steaks, ox tongues and eyeballs get personal with one another. In the live-action story, orphan Jean (Pavel Liska) comes under the influence of the Marquis (Jan Triska), who, in between participating in black masses, orgies and ordering his own burial, suggests to Jean that he admits himself into the nearby asylum to cure his nightmare-inducing fear of madness. Since the institution follows the Marquis' libertarian principles, the inmates have the run of the place to chaotic effect. The lunatics really take over the asylum, but would things really improve if the disciplinarian former regime returned to power?

• Conspirators of Pleasure | DVD | (25/06/2012) from £9.05   |  Saving you £6.94 (76.69%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Svankmajer, the Czech genius of surrealism, explores the bizarre erotic impulses of various individuals in modern Prague. One man collects porn magazines, chickens and umbrellas to fashion himself a weird creature. His neighbour does similar things with straw. And then they meet up...Their newsagent tinkers with anatomical additions to his hi-tech TV set so he can gloat over the beautiful newsreader. But the newsreader keeps carp in a bowl in her bedroom for bizarre reasons, while her neglectful husband hears operatic climaxes in his head whenever he encounters saucepan lids, fur, nails and latex fingers. Finally, there's the postwoman, who rolls bread into doughballs for very odd purposes, after delivering to the first man an ominous note simply saying 'Sunday'.

• Surviving Life | DVD | (11/06/2012) from £3.98   |  Saving you £14.00 (703.52%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Eugene (Vclav Helsus) leads a double life - one real, the other in his dreams. In real life he has a wife called Milada (Zuzana Kronerov); in his dreams he has a young girlfriend called Eugenia (Klra Issov). Sensing that these dreams have some deeper meaning, he goes to see a psychoanalyst, Dr. Holubova, who interprets them for him, with the help of some argumentative psychoanalytical griping from the animated heads of Freud and Jung.As we gradually piecing together Eugene's life story, his dream-world love affair with Eugenia is thwarted by the appearance of other characters, including her little boy Peter, her extortionist ex-husband, and a filthy old woman who keeps warning him not to harm her. Soon after, we discover she is expecting Eugene's child - to the dismay of Dr. Holubova, who believes Eugenia is in fact his anima. And getting your anima pregnant is worse than incest...