Do pivnice (1983)

Director:

Jan Svankmajer

Writers:

Josef Kolber (play)
Jan Svankmajer (writer)

Genre:

Animation | Short

Plot:

A little girl goes down to the basement cellar to fetch some potatoes, and finds all her hidden fears about the cellar depicted in animated form. |

Plot Keywords:

Based On Play

Cast

Monika Belo-Cabanová	...	Little Girl
Ol'ga Vronská	...	Old Woman
Aleksandr Letko	...	Old Man

Also Known As:

Down to the Cellar

Runtime:

15 min

Country:

Czechoslovakia

Language:

Czech

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:Unrated

Company:

Slovenská Filmová Tvorba

helmet coal

In one of Jan Svankmajer's many surreal shorts, a little girl goes downstairs to get some potatoes, and sees some pretty unusual things: a man sleeping in coal, a woman baking things made of coal, and shoes eating croissants. And the cat is also something perplexing. Maybe "Do pivnice" is looking at confronting our fears, or maybe something else. But whatever the overarching idea is, this is a pretty neat flick. I think that more than anything, these sorts of movies should disprove the notion that many of us in the West probably have that nothing creative came from the Eastern Bloc; it seems to me that Svankmajer's work is more creative than a lot of what I've seen from the US. So definitely "Czech" this movie out.