Short films by Jan Švankmajer

THE TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE AT CINEMA MASSIMO

This year, for its traditional appointement of puppets and marionettes in cinema, Incanti leaves aside fairytale atmospheres to venture into the visceral and unsettling heart of stop-motion animation. No longer mere stringless puppets, but bodies that assemble, disintegrate, devour each other: this is the world of Jan Švankmajer, Czech master of surrealist cinema, who with his unmistakable style has created a poetic universe of flesh, desire, automatism, and animated objects.

The evening offers a journey through his most iconic short films, chosen to explore the body as living and symbolic matter, in a continuous dialogue between eros and repulsion, play and death. From the lovesick meat slices of Meat Love to the dismembered footballers of Virile Games, through the cannibalistic breakfasts of Food and the self-assembling bodies of Darkness, Light, Darkness, the program is a plunge into the unease of the tangible, in the anatomical theatre of animation, revealing the most physical, ruthless, and surprisingly comic side of animated puppet theatre.