Eyes in the Darkness

SINCE THE LATE 1970S, LONDON-BASED ANIMATORS THE QUAY BROTHERS, Stephen and Timothy, have been constructing and exploring dreamworlds of their own. Or perhaps not entirely their own, since their singular animations stem from and alchemically transform elements from modern culture—literary, artistic, musical. They have made films inspired by the animation of Jan Švankmajer and the music of Stravinsky, Leoš Janáček, and Karlheinz Stockhausen; and have adapted (that being a very flexible term) writings by Robert Walser (1996 live-action feature Institute Benjamenta) and Polish writer Bruno Schulz. But such source material serves above all as a seed, to be tended and lavishly mutated in the crepuscular hothouse of the Brothers’ imagination.

This year’s Rotterdam Film Festival contained two magisterially haunting new Quay works. One was the 21-minute,, produced by their longstanding admirer Christopher Nolan. The other was an installation at the TENT exhibition space, , presenting footage from and objects related to , a feature they have already partly shot, pending further finance. Intended to comprise 70 percent animation and 30 percent live action, is also based on a Bruno Schulz work (previously adapted in 1973 by Wojciech Has)—but entirely unrelated, the Quays insist, to their previous Schulz-inspired (1986).