Watch Franz Kafka, the Wonderful Animated Film by Piotr Dumala

in Animation, Film, Literature | July 3rd, 2013 5 Comments

Let’s sneak in a quick birth­day cel­e­bra­tion before the 4th. Franz Kaf­ka was born on this day (July 3), a good 130 years ago. To com­mem­o­rate the occa­sion, we’re pre­sent­ing Piotr Dumala’s 1992 short ani­mat­ed film called, quite sim­ply, Franz Kaf­ka. Dumala’s ani­ma­tion tech­nique grew out of his train­ing as a sculp­tor, when he start­ed exper­i­ment­ing with scratch­ing images into paint­ed plas­ter. Lat­er he devel­oped a more full blown method known as “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion,” which is on full dis­play in the film. You can learn more about Dumala and his approach here. The 16-minute film is based on The Diaries of Franz Kaf­ka, and now appears in our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online. Also on our site, you can view Dumala’s adap­ta­tion of Dos­to­evsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment.

Note: This film/post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2010. Still enam­ored by Dumala’s work, we thought it was time to bring it back.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Improve­ments to Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis

Find works by Kaf­ka in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions


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Comments (5)
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  • Heath Filmore says:
    July 3, 2013 at 1:33 pm

    In hon­or of F. Kafka’s 130th birth­day I sug­gest that every­one read the book META-BLEEDIN’-MORPHOSIS, which is Kafka’s leg­endary tale as told by a guy who may or may not have been Michael Caine in a pub. It is a riot.

    Reply
  • Alena says:
    July 6, 2013 at 12:37 pm

    130th anniver­sary of the great writer in the graph­ics, col­lages and video http://youtu.be/flXximKQAHg

    Reply
  • Martin Cunningham says:
    September 16, 2013 at 7:32 pm

    Meta­mor­pho­sis Blues:nnI woke up this morn­ing­nI’d changed into a giant insect.

    Reply
  • zeitzug says:
    September 17, 2013 at 12:00 pm

    They prob­a­bly nev­er met, Franz Kaf­ka and Jaroslav Hau0161ek, the two writ­ers who both described the Czech real­i­ty at the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry. nnBoth were born in 1883, and they both died young around the age of 40. Prague was their uni­verse, but they moved in entire­ly dif­fer­ent cir­cles and their tem­pera­ment and sen­si­tiv­i­ty could not have been more dif­fer­ent. The sim­i­lar­i­ty between the two writ­ers con­sists of them both writ­ing about peo­ple find­ing them­selves in an absurd world with laws and reg­u­la­tions, they did not com­pre­hend. The dif­fer­ence lies in the way the writ­ers are let­ting their main char­ac­ter react to the absur­di­ty. KAFKA AND HAu0160EK http://bit.ly/19b0eWp

    Reply
  • Peter Leiss says:
    July 4, 2014 at 7:30 pm

    Beau­ti­ful film, many thanks!

    Reply

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