Film maker Jan Svankmajer is probably Czechoslovakia’s best-known export. His short films of animation combined with stop motion 'live action' continue to surprise even after many decades of output. The sixteen-minute Food is no exception. Events take place in three separate vignettes titled 'Breakfast', 'Lunch', and 'Dinner'. Everything from table manners through to cannibalism are thrown in to create an eccentric mix of the weird and everyday.
Typical of Svankmayer's work it is, in turn, funny, surreal, eerie, and possibly even disturbing. I say possibly because much of the Czech's animation has an underlying tension to it, and it depends upon the subject of the film as to whether or not this disrupting element comes to the fore. Since the subject matter here is food and eating, the darker aspects are constantly flipped over by wonderful touches of humour. The highlight is a human 'vending machine', complete with a dumbwaiter in its chest that descends into the bowels of the earth. Marvellous.
Rob Dyer
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