Escuridão, Luz, Escuridão

This 7 minutes short is a fascinating clay animation where a man constructs himself from clay (literally), being a God and his creature at the same time, putting the different parts of body together in a very small room. The more parts find their pace, the bigger the man becomes, the smaller and more suffocating the room gets. "Darkness-Light-Darkness" has been seen by many critics and viewers as a very strong allegory of suffocating life in Eastern Europe which is true, but I also see it as an allegory of a struggle every talented and deeply feeling artist goes through in the search for beauty and meaning regardless the political system or the country they live. From the darkness of non-existence to the light of knowledge to the unbearable darkness of being - that's the road Svankmajer takes us and as usual, his vision is not a cheerful or optimistic one.

An inventive, even witty Svankmajer short (lasting 6 minutes) which basically sees the various disembodied components of the human body converging inside a low-ceilinged house(!) on their way to assembling the whole. Sometimes, though, it seems they're not quite sure how it's all supposed to turn out – as ever more organs knock at the door demanding entry; the biggest laugh unsurprisingly involves male genitalia as a very loud thud is heard prior to its (unimpressive) appearance! The claymation effects, naturally, are splendid and the results are delightful and striking enough (even at this modest scale, compared to the feature-length ALICE [1988], to which it's been attached on DVD) to definitely make me interested in checking out more of this celebrated animator's work.

This really cool short film is everything you want from surrealism.

It's bizarre, freaky, but it's not arbitrary. It establishes a simple concept and follows it through with a fetishistic weirdness in every moment.

It's not meant to convey some cryptic message, it just gets it's hands dirty as it delves into the dream like and reshuffles the familiar human body.

My first entry in to Jan Svankmajer's world was with "Neco z Alenky", a surreal take on Alice in Wonderland that drew me in instantly. After watching "Neco z Alenky", I immediately started looking for more material by Jan Svankmajer, and I came across this little short animation which blew my mind out of the water.

During the 6 minutes of "Tma/Svetlo/Tma" (Darkness/Light/Darkness) we are invited to witness the different parts of the human male body entering a room separately and trying to figure out how to complete the human form. During this, the small room gets more and more crowded and difficult to move in. To me, the message this short gave me was that we should not aim higher than our capabilities, or we might end up with our goals crowding a small room, eventually turning off the light on it. But this is my interpretation, I've read several more interesting ones as well.

If you enjoy surreal / abstract cinema art, you owe it to yourself to watch this short as soon as possible, you will not be disappointed.

Each film of Jan Svankmajer is, for me , kick to wake up. Tma/Svetlo/Tma is one par excellence. Because it reminds the universe of Alice in the small room and its significances, the build of a body , in which the hands are the first workers , the sexual organs before the clay as material for the body . So, a seductive parable , poetic and profound useful.