In "The Ossuary", Jan Svankmajer shows that while he was still in his preliminary stages of filmmaking, the styles he utilized in his earliest works would ultimately become extremely important to his work later on. This 1970 work does not make use of any animation as later became the director's trademark, and is more of a documentary than an avant-garde short, but the absolute most is made of the setting he had to work with, and it is executed to perfection as a result. Most of this is due largely to the camerawork, which is sometimes non-stationary and other times moves controlled by stop-motion - essentially the only use of the technique seen in the entire movie.
The ten-minute film documents a historic chapel, famous for the fact that the various decorations and ornaments inside the place are made entirely of human bones. The setting alone is interesting enough to make the film work, but the creative editing and camerawork brings the setting to life in a crazy way. Little actually happens, and the soundtrack itself consists entirely of a Spanish-speaking narrator talking about the history (apparently), but Svankmajer made the most of what he had to work with and the result is a truly amazing meditation on death.