Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books have inspired generations of other writers and artists, but Švankmajer’s mix of live action and stop-motion animation returns to those elements of the books that originally made them so revered. While the more family-friendly adaptations treat the Alice stories as a fairy tale with moral lessons and good triumphing over evil, Švankmajer considers the books the expression of a dream in which repressed urges win out over rational thought. And so they do. Švankmajer’s Alice is both the protagonist and the narrator, in line with his stated belief that his own childhood thoughts are the source of his creativity. (86 mins.)

Švankmajer re-imagines the legend of Dr. Faustus as a diabolical play within a puppet play within real life, interlocking like a series of secret dungeons. A man is handed a map that leads him to an underground dressing room. Innocently donning the makeup and costume of an actor playing Faust, he finds himself thrust into a spectacular series of real-life and animated tableaux filled with larger-than-life puppets, flaming devils, and ancient, alchemical rituals. “FAUST is a dilemma everyone knows: either he can expand his knowledge, even though he knows he’ll be punished, or he can fail to revolt and spend his life in the institutionalized happiness promised by society.”—Jan Švankmajer (97 mins.)

In place of dialogue, CONSPIRATORS OF PLEASURE features a narrator telling the parallel stories of six “normal” people who have each developed their own elaborate autoerotic rituals involving food, inanimate objects, and occasionally other living beings. Švankmajer reveals a domain of solitary eroticism wherein sexuality is meant not to unite people but rather becomes a vehicle for the imagination. With its refusal of dialogue, the film positions the spectator to become a fellow conspirator, filling in the gaps in the chain that links Švankmajer’s hedonists. “CONSPIRATORS evinces an unexpected grasp of human perversity ... The human characters’ mystic, obsessive rites are every bit as involved and alchemical as Švankmajer’s wizardly brand of animation.”—Dennis Lim, Village Voice (75 mins.)

Before turning to feature filmmaking in 1982, Švankmajer made more than two dozen shorts that made him internationally famous. This selection includes many of his masterworks, including FIAT (1968, 13 mins.), in which a man finds himself trapped inside a one-room apartment with sponge-like walls, a malevolent bowl of soup, and a chair with a mind of its own; THE GARDEN (1968, 17 mins.), which reveals a man with a most unusual fence around his garden; JABBERWOCKY (1971, 12 mins.), “a Freudian record of the development of a child through all its stages: through homosexuality and sadomasochism to rebellion against the father”; DIMENSIONS OF DIALOGUE (1983, 11 mins.), an exploration of the various forms of dialogue through Giuseppe Archimbaldo-like heads that cannibalize and devour each other in a savage game; FIORA (1989, 1 min.), exploring the last moments of a creature made out of fruits and vegetables; MEAT LOVE (1989, 1 min.), the dark tale of two pieces of meat that fall in love; and FOOD (1992, 17 mins.), a hilariously Freudian satire on eating habits told in three chapters: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. (75 mins.)

Described by fellow Czech filmmaker Milos Forman as “Disney plus Buñuel,” LITTLE OTIK is a bizarre, satirical parable of parenting, food phobia, and monstrous mass consumption modeled on a famous Czech folktale. A childless couple dig up a tree stump, treat it as their baby, and, by the force of their love, bring it to life ... at which point it starts devouring everything around it, the family cat and the postman being only the first victims. Švankmajer’s surrealist vision bristles with a barbed political, psychological intelligence and grotesque surprises. (127 mins.)

Mashing Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade, Švankmajer conjures up a terror-filled world that turns madness upside down. Jean, whose greatest fear is imprisonment in the madhouse where his late mother was committed, is invited by a friend to experience a new sort of asylum. We follow Jean as he descends into a mental hospital where the staff is behind bars and the inmates run free, in an adventure that blurs the often-political lines between madness and sanity. “Dark, scary … a comic metaphor for human existence itself.”—J. Hoberman, Village Voice (123 mins.)

Švankmajer’s most recent film is one of the warmest and funniest of his career. Eugene, seemingly content in his marriage and mundane career, finds himself repeatedly dreaming of a mysterious beautiful woman. Seeking the help of a psychoanalyst to explain this phenomenon, he finds himself torn between his erotic dream life and the waking world. Eugene surprises his doctor (and us) by saying he doesn’t want to stop the dreams but rather wants to plunge deeper into his subconscious to spend more time with this woman of his dreams. Which reality would you choose? “A handmade dream … more imagination than most of us can muster in our most fevered states.”—Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times (105 mins.)