Animator Jan Švankmajer Launches Indiegogo Campaign For His Final Film “Insects”

Animator Jan Švankmajer Launches Indiegogo Campaign For His Final Film “Insects”

May 25th, 2016

Jerry Beck

Athanor Production Company has announced they are launching an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the production of legendary Czech director Jan Švankmajer’s final film, Insects. After five long years of development, with the help of his loyal fans and industry supporters worldwide, Švankmajer and his producing partner Jaromir Kallista are hoping to start filming later this summer.

Jan Švankmajer is an internationally acclaimed director, author and pioneer of stop-motion animation, whose artistry has had a lasting impact on the works of Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, David Lynch and the Brothers Quay, among others. A prominent figure of the surrealist movement, Švankmajer has produced more than 30 short and feature-length films.

Insects will be a surreal film whose imagery echoes that of Kafka and the Čapek Brothers. In a local pub in a small town, a troupe of amateur actors rehearse a play by the Čapek Brothers, “The Insect Play.” On a raised platform across the room we see a stage, set for Act II of the play. As the rehearsal progresses, the characters of the play are born and die with no regard to time. The actors slowly become one with them and some of them experience frightening transformations.

Švankmajer states, “The Čapek brothers’ play is very misanthropic. I’ve always liked that — bugs behave as a human beings, and people behave as insects. My screenplay extends this misanthropy further while also reflecting Franz Kafka and his famous “Metamorphosis”. It gets increasingly difficult to fund independent art that scrutinizes the very core of our society. Who would deliberately support their own critics? We make a film every five or six years not because of a lack of ideas, but due to the lack of funds to back up our projects. Our hope is that crowdfunding may be the way to change this. The initial $150,000 we aim to raise on Indiegogo will enable us to start shooting with live actors; eventually, we will need to raise far more in order to complete the animations and post-production.”

Jan Švankmajer and Terry Gilliam at the Summer Film School in Uherské Hradiště in 2009

Some of the amazing rewards and perks range from scripts and DVDs signed by Švankmajer, early downloads and screenings of Insects, and signed lithographies to one of the insect “actors” in a wooden box, a visit to the film set, producer credits and dinner with Švankmajer himself. Check out the Indiegogo page and consider contributing to what will proabably be a stop-motion masterpiece.

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Jerry Beck

Writer, cartoon producer and author of more than 15 books on animation history. A former studio exec with Nickelodeon and Disney; currently on the faculty at both CalArts in Valencia and Woodbury University in Burbank, California.