The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia

The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia
The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia
Directed by	Jan Švankmajer
Written by	Jan Švankmajer
Produced by	Keith Griffiths; Michael Havas; Jaromír Kallista
Cinematography	Svatopluk Malý
Edited by	Marie Zemanová
Production; companies	British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC);
Distributed by	First Run Features (USA) (theatrical)
Release date	13 February 1991 (USA);
Running time	10 minutes
Country	United Kingdom

The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (Czech: Konec stalinismu v Čechách) is a 1990 animated surrealist short film by Jan Švankmajer. In 1990 the BBC asked Švankmajer to make a film about situation in Czechoslovakia. Švankmajer later remarked: "Despite the fact that this film emerged along the same path of imagination as all my other films, I never pretended that it was anything more than propaganda. Therefore I think it is a film which will age more quickly than any of the others."^[1]

Plot[]

Stalin's bust is opened on an operating table, and this leads into an animated sequence which depicts Czech history from 1948, when it was taken over by Communists, to 1989, when the Velvet Revolution took place.

Reception[]

Janet Maslin of The New York Times describes the film as being a "wonderfully apt short", and describes the plot of "rush[ing] a statue of Stalin through drastic surgery, cranks out clay workers on an assembly line only to grind them back into clay" is "droll, breakneck satire".^[2]

Release[]

The film aired on BBC Two in the UK on 3 June 1990.^[3]

References[]

^ Peter Hames (2008). The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer: Dark Alchemy. Wallflower Press.
^ Maslin, Janet (13 February 1991). "Long-Repressed Tale of Repression". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 November 2011.
^ "Listings for Sunday, 3rd June 1990". The Television & Radio Database. Retrieved 13 December 2021.

External links[]

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[1] Peter Hames (2008). The Cinema of Jan Švankmajer: Dark Alchemy. Wallflower Press.

[2] Maslin, Janet (13 February 1991). "Long-Repressed Tale of Repression". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 November 2011.

[3] "Listings for Sunday, 3rd June 1990". The Television & Radio Database. Retrieved 13 December 2021.

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v t Films directed by Jan Švankmajer
Feature films	Alice (1988) Faust (1994) Conspirators of Pleasure (1996) Little Otik (2000) Lunacy (2005) Surviving Life (2010) Insects (2018)
Short films	The Last Trick (1964) A Game with Stones (1964) The Garden (1968) The Flat (1968) Picnic with Weissmann (1968) A Quiet Week in the House (1969) Don Juan (1969) Jabberwocky (1971) Leonardo's Diary (1972) Castle of Otranto (1977) Dimensions of Dialogue (1982) The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope (1983) Meat Love (1988) The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (1990) Food (1992)