The creative imagination of cult Czech film-maker Jan Svankmajer exceeds the limits of film. Like much of his recent work, this new feature mixes live action with his unique brand of stop-motion animation. Borrowing from two poetic masters of decadence, Svankmajer steals his plot from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Premature Burial to explore the Marquis de Sade’s questioning of good and evil, asking audiences to consider whether theories of freedom or harsh discipline function as equally repressive measures. In glorious counterpoint are the film-maker’s characteristically strange animation sequences, full of cavorting raw meat, pig’s trotters, eyeballs and tongues skittering along surfaces.

Plus: LEVIATHAN, director Simon Bogojevic-Narath’s animated pageant inspired by Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 book. (Croatia, 2006. 14 min.)