<\/p>\n
Creating around 30 short films, \u0160vankmajer often used biting metaphors. His main themes were censorship and self-censorship, which permeated his early works in Prague in the early 1960s. Even the title of his first short film included the word \u201ctrick\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unable to accept the normalisation policy of communism, \u0160vankmajer emigrated to Austria with his family in 1968. However, he returned a year later, continuing to work with coded messages in his films, culminating in Czech surrealism. In the 1970s and 1980s, \u0160vankmajer delved into the human psyche, portraying it as an unpredictable, murky, and contradictory space. \u201cCensorship has the advantage of making you express yourself in very inventive ways and think in symbols\u2026 those are the only weapons you have against censorship,\u201d he concludes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1993, when Czechoslovakia regained its independence and was divided into two countries, \u0160vankmajer almost came close to stopping making short films. This marked the decline of his \u201cencrypted form\u201d. The RIGA IFF retrospective screening includes nine of his short films \u2013 a feast of the Aesopian and language games. Nine masterful, fierce and timeless film tricks.<\/p>\n
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