Kunstkamera

An astonishing array of paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, objects and materials fill room after room – but this is not a museum open to the general public. It is the home of the celebrated artist couple Jan Švankmajer and his late wife Eva, situated in the Czech Republic’s Horní Staňkov Castle.

Like Guillermo del Toro with his self-curated Bleak House in Los Angeles, the Švankmajers took their inspiration from the wunderkabinett (cabinet of curiosities) lovingly assembled by Rudolf II in the early 17th century. The film’s title Kunstkamera is a pun on the Emperor’s Kunstkammer – for here, Jan Švankmajer has wittily converted a stroll by an unseen figure through his home into a film that seems infinite.

For a creator who has been described as an “animator-warlock and cinematographer-alchemist”, there is no rational order to the arrangement of items in this vast collection – only free association and poetic profusion. Švankmajer, now 88, has declared Kunstkamera to be his final work. Edited to the music of Vivaldi (note for the ears: it sounds just as good played backwards!), Kunstkamera will stir fond memories for those cinephiles who have loved the Švankmajer films (dating back to 1964) proudly showcased at IFFR for decades.

– Adrian Martin