Insects, based on the famous 1922 Karel and Josef Čapek drama The Insect Play, will be the seventh feature film by the legendary auteur. Over the course of his fifty-year career, Švankmajer has worked in a variety of genres and media — including theater, which brought him to Toronto in the late 1970s with a Laterna Magika production of the Ester Krumbachová play Lost Fairy Tale, staged by local actors.

Here, Švankmajer talks about his latest project and his first experience with crowdfunding.

What made you choose the Čapek brothers’ play as the inspiration for your final film? What attracts you to literary works in general?
Originally I thought Surviving Life (2010) would be my last feature film. I am getting on in years, after all, and making a long stop-motion film is demanding, not just mentally but physically. More than anything else, however, it’s stressful, at least for me. I’m a Virgo. We’re known for being anxious, overly responsible, stubborn people who cling to their ideas. So the whole thing is exhausting. It requires complete concentration. You have to be “in it” 24 hours a day. I don’t know any other way to do it, and wouldn’t want to. My energy may be dwindling, but as long as I survived, I decided I might as well tempt fate one more time. My treatment for Insects is from 1970. It wasn’t possible to make the film back then, so it stayed in the desk drawer, as we say, for over 40 years. In the meantime, we managed to nearly empty out the drawer of screenplays from the 1970s and ’80s that were banned or “unacceptable.”

My work with literary sources is always subjective: I don’t just “adapt” them. In most cases I’ve appropriated the themes over the course of my life to the point where they’ve become a part of me and my worldview. I don’t see them as something outside myself that I’m just borrowing from. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland became part of my mental morphology in my early childhood, Edgar Allan Poe in adolescence, the Marquis de Sade in my surrealist adulthood. With the Čapek brothers it’s a little different. My relation to them is ambivalent. I try to express this in the preface that comes at the start of the film. The Insect Play is one of their more palatable works for me, because of its misanthropy: I always liked the fact that they have bugs behaving like human beings and people behaving like insects. My screenplay extends this misanthropy even further, but in my film their play is just a backdrop for a completely different story, the story of an amateur theater company that is rehearsing the play. The spirit of it is more Kafka than the Čapek brothers.

What type of animation did you choose for the film?
It will be live-action with stop-motion animation — again, combined. After doing some tests, we decided to use not only classical 3D animation, but also to animate photographs, like we did in Surviving Life. As usual, we’ll also shoot a making-of. Then, in the editing room, I want to cut one film out of the two.

Which actors will appear in the film and why did you cast them?
The story takes place almost entirely in one room, with six characters. Some of the actors are from my previous films, the rest are new. I can’t name them yet, we’re still negotiating. I chose them based on their eyes and mouths, as I usually do.

"So I make movies the best I know how and everyone has to figure them out for themselves,” - Jan Švankmajer

Do you have any expectations about the film’s reception by foreign audiences? The success of the crowdfunding campaign confirmed that your films have fans literally all over the world.
My goal is to make truly authentic films, which means I don’t take the audience into consideration at all. To me it would feel like cheating people if I gave them what they already know, what they’ve already seen before. I assume they’re curious about what I think, what I have to say, what pisses me off, what I admire, and they’re also curious to see how I present it. I don’t think there’s any point to creativity otherwise, or it would be nothing but a commercial product, or propaganda. So I make movies the best I know and everyone has to figure them out for themselves. The films I make are imaginative, so the audience has to come up with their own interpretation —  and I’d like to emphasize, there is no one authoritative interpretation. Any interpretation that comes to your mind is correct. Even I myself don’t know what the film is until it’s finished.

What made you decide to use crowdfunding to support this film? Did you know of any other major filmmakers who had done so?
The kind of films we make are getting increasingly harder to finance. It’s a sad fact that, even though our films are screened all over the world, they don’t earn enough to fund production of another film. Civilization is moving further and further toward a place where people like us, children of the revolutionary 1960s, can’t or don’t even want to go. And I think it’s only going to get worse. It may be that crowdfunding is one of the only ways left to still make authentic films. I was pleasantly surprised by the positive response to our campaign, and by the support from my colleagues. I knew about Jodorowski. His reasons were similar to ours.

Not being a user of social media, has your stance toward it changed as a result of the campaign? How did you follow its progress?
No, my stance hasn’t changed. I put myself in the hands of my youthful team, and did what they told me to do.

Is your mind made up that Insects is going to be your final feature? How did you feel about the laments of your diehard fans on social media when the news was released?
I’ve never felt that attached to film. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, when I wasn’t allowed to make my own films, I didn’t see it as such a tragedy, unlike many of my colleagues who met the same fate. Whatever medium you use, the poetry is the same. I pursued mine by creating collages, objects, through tactile experiments and collective games in our surrealist group. I certainly didn’t get bored. So I don’t expect I’ll give it up now either. I’ll definitely continue making my naturalistic objects — just yesterday I bought a pile of bones. As far as film goes, I’d like to shoot a few shorts applying the concept of mental automatism to film. It shouldn’t be so financially demanding. Especially since with mental automatism, you have to work quickly.

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WITH THE PRODUCERS ON THE CAMPAIGN

Jan Švankmajer prefers to work with people he knows. Apart from his late wife and artistic partner, Eva Švankmajerová, and their children, Veronika and Václav (following in their parents’ footsteps as designer and animator respectively), one of the filmmaker’s longest-lasting working relationships is with Jaromír Kallista and Pavla Kallistová, who together run the production company Athanor. They support every aspect of Švankmajer’s artistic output. Not only do they look after his cinematic legacy, overseeing the making of his films, as well as their licensing, screenings, and video releases, but they also produce his art exhibitions, including publication of books and exhibition catalogs.

For years, the Kallistas had been toying with the prospect of turning to crowdfunding. Last year, while they were in Barcelona to open a major exhibition by Jan and Eva, the local audience was enthusiastic about the idea.

“Our generation is hesitant about social media, though we recognize its potential,” Kallista said in an interview at this year’s film festival in Karlovy Vary. “When we sat down here last year with Marek Loskot, who offered to step in and run the campaign, we knew that, with our international contacts and his youthful energy and team, we would have a fighting chance. He brought in a group of experienced social media and production specialists, and we  couldn’t have been more pleased with the results.”

One crucial aspect of the collaboration was to respect the philosophy of the filmmaker himself, who was leery of the usual marketing machinery. Once Švankmajer got on board, though, he was fully engaged and gave the team complete freedom. He wrote all the content himself, created two collages for an exclusive edition of lithographs, allowed full access to all his films, and shot several promotional videos.

“We were constantly in awe of his artistry and were blessed to be able to work with this icon of film animation. It made it easy to approach his colleagues for support,” said Loskot. “The Brothers Quay and Henry Selick donated props from their films. Guillermo del Toro, Jan Pinkava, Jan Passer and others shot campaign videos. Neil Gaiman bought a lithograph and tweeted out a call for support even before we asked him to get involved.”

Apart from a host of attractive perks for contributors, the crowdfunding campaign featured first-class graphic design, a lively stream of updates and videos with the filmmaker, and an additional exclusive perk for each stretch goal. Švankmajer’s fans around the globe responded with enthusiasm, eating up every new piece of information. In the first two days alone, over 600 backers donated 40 percent of the initial goal. By the final day, the number of contributions had hit 2,571, with a total of nearly $275,000 raised (181 percent of the goal). Vimeo was promoting the new film with a special free streaming of the Švankmajer fan favorite Little Otik. The project remains on the Indiegogo marketplace InDemand.

To show his appreciation, the director thanked his supporters with a video on his Facebook page, saying, “It’s absolutely tremendous. I didn’t expect this kind of overwhelming support.” He added, “I promise I will do my absolute best to make sure those who contributed feel they have helped a meaningful cause.” He plans to start shooting in fall 2016, with the final product premiering in 2018.