This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Food (film) is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
| Jídlo | |
|---|---|
 The film's poster |
|
| Directed by | Jan Švankmajer |
| Produced by | Jaromír Kallista |
| Written by | Jan Švankmajer |
| Cinematography | Svatopluk Malý |
| Editing by | Marie Zemanová |
| Distributed by | Zeitgeist Films |
| Release date(s) | 1992 |
| Running time | 17 min. |
| Country | Czech Republic |
| Language | There is no dialogue. |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Jídlo (-Czech, meaning the food in English) is a 1992 animated short film that uses claymation and live action directed by Jan Švankmajer. It examines human relationship to food by showing breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Contents |
Plot
Breakfast
A man enters a room, sits down, and brushes off the previous diner's left overs onto the floor. Across from him sits another man with a placard attached to a chain hanging around his neck. The diner stands up and reads the placard one line at a time and follows the instructions. He puts money down the man's throat and pokes him in the eye. The man's shirt unbuttons itself, and a dumbwaiter rises up into where the man's chest should be. The diner takes his food, and punches the man in the chin for his utensils. When he is done eating, he kicks the man's shin for a napkin. After wiping off his mouth, the diner convulses, and then goes limp. The man now comes to life, stretches, and places the placard on the former diner. He stands and puts another tally mark on the wall. Another diner comes in and the scenario is repeated with him. At the end, we see a line stretching down the hall and around the corner.
Lunch
Two diners, a business man and a vagabond, are unable to get the waiter's attention. They proceed to eat everything in sight: the flowers, their shoes, pants, shirt, underwear, plates, table cloth, table, and chairs. The vagabond watches the business man and then eats what he eats. In the end with everything else eaten, the business man eats his utensils. The vagabond also eats his. The business man then smiles, pulls his utensils from his mouth, and advances on the vagabond.
Dinner
A surreal restaurant where the diners cannibalize parts of themselves is shown. A rich man sits at a table adding many sauces and spices to his dish, which is hidden by the sheer number of condiments (This is shown in the film poster). This continues for a long time, and then we see him hammer a fork to a wooden left hand. He then starts to eat his own hand. We also see an athlete eating his lower leg, a woman eating her breasts (this is also shown in the film poster), and a man eating his genitals. The camera moves in and the man covers his genitals and shoos the camera away with his hand.
Reception
A New York Times review called the film "caustically witty but slight." It goes on to say that "Švankmajer conceived the film in the 1970's, when it seemed too risky a political allegory to be made. . . . it now seems too simple a statement about how people are devoured by mechanistic states and each other[1]."
External links
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 8 August 2008, at 06:11.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Food (film)".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.