The Cinematheque

“Unparalleled animation work … Alice gets as close as any work of cinema to an approximation of dream logic, flow, and construction.”

David Heslin, Sight and Sound

“Now you will see a film made for children… perhaps.” So begins Jan Švankmajer’s masterpiece Alice. Unlike Disney’s version, which arranges the episodes of Lewis Carroll’s creation into a linear journey, the Czech stop-motion animator follows a different guide, turning Alice’s tumbles, transformations, and strange encounters into pure dream-reality experiences. Sock puppets, wooden dolls, and adorable play-objects coexist with nails, locked doors, and shattered mirrors. Just as key and memorable are the film’s sounds and echoes, its lack of score and its rhythmic storybook narration by Kristýna Kohoutová, the child actor who plays Alice. Her voice creates the eerie, imaginative world of the film, one in which the audience is otherwise given little sign as to how to read Alice’s trip; some scenes can be described as a beautiful fantasy, others as something verging on a nightmare. Švankmajer’s idea was that both should be experienced and are, in fact, essential to childhood.

In Czech with English subtitles

Grand Prize
Annecy Animation Festival 1989