Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

To say that Director Jan Svankmajer, whose movie “Surviving life” we are about to see, is “unique”, that would be an understatement. He begun his work in early sixties and for next fifty years he stubbornly followed his own path, with complete disregard and almost disdain to any modern development in the movie industry. For half a century he kept mastering his craft. And he became master. At least that’s what Terry Gilliam from the Monthy Pythons Flying Circus called him – as Monty Pythons took great deal of inspiration from Svankmajer. While Monty Pythons became household name and legend, Svankmajer is well known and admired by handful of movie aficionados …and misunderstood, or even disliked by a typical Hollywood production moviegoer.

To find out where did Svankmajer, one of the last surviving and true surrealists, took his inspiration, we would have to go deep in the history. Svankmajer himself was born in the third decade of the twentieth century, but to really find his roots, we may have to go even deeper, such as…..imagine Prague, one of the most charming and beautiful cities of Austro Hungarian monarchy, lets say… in year 1912. Prague was full of character then as it is now, and perhaps even prettier. And 1912 was great time for artistic and creative minds, filled with decadent Art Nouveau and mixed with first flashes of Art Deco and Cubism…

Needless to say, there were so many interesting characters living in Prague at that time. Take for example that strange looking young man, living next to Old Town Square, smallish lawyer with pointy ears and piercing eyes, who goes by name of Franz Kafka. Couple blocks from his house you could find few buildings that belongs to Charles university, which at that time was already more than five centuries old….In one of the unassuming buildings you can meet  equally unassuming science professor, who only few years before had published his Theory of Relativity, considered by many as the real beginning of the modern times. Albert Einstein moved to Berlin just before the First War in 1914, but he spend two very fruitful and happy years in Prague, teaching few students and mostly working on his theory of time as the fourth dimension. Finally, time to time, in some of the fancy Prague cafés you may spot a face of another, and possibly the most important Svankmajer´s source of inspiration, Mr. Sigmund Freud. He, at that time lived in Vienna, but was born not far from Prague in a town called Pribor.

So, for those of us, who really want to make and enjoy the cocktail called Svankmajer, here is the recipe: Pour one ounce of Einstein into a highball glass, add two ounces of Kafka and three ounces of Freud. Top it all with couple drops of Good Soldier Švejk. Stir, do not shake! And serve cool, very, very cool…