"Every civilization, when it senses the approach of extinction, goes back to its origins and seeks whether the myths on which it is built contain a new possibility of interpretation that could give it a new impetus and thus avert the impending catastrophe. The Faustian myth is one of the key myths of this civilization. The lesson of Faust is, in my opinion, one of the basic morphological (archetypal) situations of both man himself (the individual) and his community (civilization). Every man is one day faced with a dilemma: either to live his life in conformity, with the vague promise of institutional Happiness, or to rebel and follow an anti-civilization path, regardless of the consequences. (...) The Faust Lesson, however, will not be a film à la thesis; on the contrary, I want to give free rein, as in Alice, to ʻunconscious interpretationsʼ, because I have much more confidence in ʻinternal controlʼ than in external form and construction. This romantic faith may seem like an anachronism in todayʼs postmodern age, but someone has to take it through this neoclassical, neoconservative, eclectic age before a ʻnew romanticismʼ is formed." Jan Švankmajer

For March, we have prepared Jan Švankmajer's 1993 film The Faust Lesson.