The Czech animation filmmaker Jan Å vankmajer is one of the internationally most renowned practitioners within the genre.The spectrum of his creative activity ranges from political films to lyrical works and works based on adaptations of literature, and on to lyrical explorations of his filmic material.His shorter films, often leaning towards the surreal, dissolve logical contexts of meaning, construing, instead, weird, dreamlike stories that appear to exist outside the confines of space and time.He breathes life into dead matter, and goes in search of those morbid traits in the living that suggest the dark side of existence, the uncanny, and the labyrinthine ways of the psyche. These unfamiliar perspectives give birth to incomparable, fairytale-like satires.Included is an interview with Jan Å vankmajer by Gerald A. Matt.