Jan Swankmajer was born in Prague on september the fourth 1934. Over the years he has been recognised for his surreal animations. The Film maker still resides in Prague today.
As a young child Swankmajer was given a toy puppet theatre for Christmas, this later had influences on some of his later work. He studied at the college of applied arts in Prague from 1950 to 1954, and then at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts (department of puppetry) later on. Soon after, he became involved in the "Theatre Of Masks" and then the famous "Black Theatre". But the place where he first encountered film was at the Laterna Magika Puppet Theatre. In 1970 he met his wife, she was a surrealist painter called Eva Svankmajerova. In the same year he met the leading theoretician of the Czech Surrealist Group, he became a member, and is still a member to this day.
1964 saw Swankmajer produce his first film. The film was called The Last Trick. From then onwards, he started moving away from his early work, and started to produce films based around classic surrealism. Many of his movies consisted of a disturbing and aggressive nature. This lead to the communist authorities banning him from making films in 1972, this meant that he was virtually unknown to the western part of the country until the 1980s. The ban was a major blow to his work and even some of his later work was suppressed, but slowly, Swankmajer began to become more well known. He started developing a reputation and trademarks such as: exaggerated sounds, fast motion sequences and strange effects. In 1982 he created the short film "Dimensions of Dialogue", which Terry Gilliam and many other critics consider to be in the top ten for the best animations ever made. Six years later he created another iconic short film called "Alice" which was based around the well known film "Alice in Wonderland". In 1994 he produced "Faust", and in 1998 he released "Conspirators of Pleasure". In 2005 Swankmajer made "Lunacy", a surreal comic horror based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe and the life of Marquis da Sade. 
His most recent work to date is "Surviving Life", which is a Czech comedy film. It uses a mixture of cutout animation and photographs, to tell the story of a married man who lives a double life in his dreams. The budget for the film is 40 million CZK. It will revolve around a play called "Pictures From the Insects' Life" by Karel Capec. Today Swankmajer is working on a big project which will be called "Insects". It is due to be released in 2015. The budget for the film is 40 million CZK. It will revolve around a play called "Pictures From the Insects' Life" by Karel Capek.
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