Bugs for Your Head: Metamorphosis + The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb

A special treat for the more demanding viewers who like to plunge into the artsy depths of the shockproof pool, here are two 50-minute adaptations of famous literary classics, which will take you on an existentially depressing journey into the lives of bugs. First, we find ourselves in the insect body of Gregor Samsa from Kafka's The Metamorphosis in the made-for-TV film of Czechoslovak iconoclast in exile Jan Němec. Afterwards, immersive animation will transports us to a bug-infested dystopian version of The Adventures of Tom Thumb. For the price of one ticket, you get a unique combo of two completely distinctive, wickedly grotesque films! So don't hesitate to come and get your fill of angst, gloom and uncompromised creative visions.

Metamorphosis

„As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect.“ A line that would make any B-movie director proud. But first impressions can be misleading. With these words Franz Kafka opens his famous novella. And they are also heard in the opening of its film adaptation, made shortly after his emigration from the dung beetle reality of the communist Czechoslovakia by the enfant terrible of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Jan Němec. The story unfolds solely from Gregor’s perspective and this original approach creates a uniquely disturbing atmosphere. Do not be afraid and come to Aero to feel and explore, through the incredibly tactile camera, all the musty corners of the apartment of an orderly bourgeois family, behind whose respectable facade lies inherent brutality and cruelty.

The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb

This disturbing, bleak and at the same time visually incredible take on the story of Tom Thumb takes the audience into a deranged dystopian world full of industrial horrors, repulsive physicality and ubiquitous insects. It is a grim vision build at the the intersection of the extreme fantasies of David Lynch, Jan Švankmajer, Guy Maddin and Phil Tippett, inhabited by heroic little folk, sad mutants, demonic agents, ruthless scientists and hopeless lowlifes. This cinematic Frankenstein’s monster is brought to both beautiful and terrifying life through fantastic animation. In his crowning achievement, director Dave Borthwick gives full rein to his uncompromising ambitions that made Bolex Brothers a sensation in its day, but also inevitably drove the studio into bankruptcy. The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb combines stop motion animation with pixelation. The heightened expressiveness inherent in those animation techniques becomes the main means of expression in this cinematic curiosity, which contains nearly to no dialogue. On the other hand, what use are words when you can let the nightmares hidden in our childhood hearts do the talking?