INVENTION OF DESTRUCTION   1958 (Vynález zkázy) Directed by Karel Zeman 82 minutes In Czech with English subtitles

Some people like to straitjacket themselves in whatever is popular at the moment, no matter how narrow-minded it is. Today we have animation that looks like it's all influenced by the same few sources. So it's not surprising that to find something really fresh we can't turn to what is being created by the latest cutting-edge technology, but instead we have to go back to a Czechoslovakian movie made in the late 1950s!

One of greatest fantasy animators of all time was a Czechoslovakian wizard named Karel Zeman (The Fabulous Baron Munchhausen). Despite the fact he is barely known in the west, he made incredible mind-bending flicks that linger in the twilight zone between real live-action and otherworldly surreal animation. The effect is truly eerie. In the case of this film he takes Gustave Doré-like line engravings and throws real human beings into this bizarrely designed world. The visuals are simply stunning and his technique is disorientating. The story is sourced from one of the early sci-fi stories of Jules Verne written in the 1890s. The music score is by the legendary Zdeněk Liška, a composer whose name you will find in my newsletters often in relation to the films of the Czech New Wave (and Jan Švankmajer). The result was one of the favorite films of French director Alain Resnais. A prime example of visionary steampunk - 40 years before it even existed!

This will be a high-definition screening.

Movie starts at 20:30 Doors open at 20:00, drinks at the bar