Surrealism

Surrealism

Jan Švankmajer is a Czech film-maker and artist whose work spans several pieces of media. He is a self-labelled surrealist known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Terry Gilliam, Brothers Quay. An early influence on his later artistic development was a puppet theatre he was given for Christmas as a child. He was married to Eva Švankmajerová, an internationally known surrealist painter, ceramicist, and writer until her death in October 2005. 
Švankmajer has gained a reputation over several decades for his distinctive use of stop-motion technique, and his ability to make surreal, nightmarish, and yet somehow funny pictures.
Švankmajer's trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses fast-motion sequences when people walk or interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects being brought to life through stop-motion. Many of his films also include clay objects in stop-motion, otherwise known as clay animation. Food is a favourite subject and medium. Stop-motion features in most of his work, though recently his feature films have included much more live action sequences than animation.
Jan Švankmajer's work i think was also inspired by the famous artist Salvador Dali, who is world famous for his surreal art work. 
I think that the genre that Jan Švankmajer focuses on 'Surrealism' is inspired from the artist Salvador Dali, i believe this as Salvador himself use to create weird and bizzare pieces of art. I aslo think that Jan could of been inspired by Salvadors movie 'Un Chien Andalou' in this film there is a scene that is really surreal and out of the ordinary. The scene is where a lady's eye ball gets cut by a razor, this is surreal and bizzare that it can un-nerve and make the audience feel un-comfortable. I think that Jan could of been inspired by this movie as in his short animation 'Food' Jan uses clay to take place of human body parts, this can make the audience feel out of thier comfort zone and sometimes make them discusted at the film. The way jan uses claymation is clever as he takes the normal factor out of the humans in his animation and makes them do stuff that people cant normally do.