Inside the Box - Episode 3 - Three Fantastic Journeys by Karel Zeman

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:31:28 — 36.7MB)

Trevor Berrett and David Blakeslee are pleased to present Inside the Box, a podcast series that explores the riches in the various box sets released by The Criterion Collection. In this episode, they discuss Three Fantastic Journeys by Karel Zeman, which contains Journey to the Beginning of Time, Invention for Destruction, and The Fabulous Baron Munchausen.

A one-of-a-kind silver-screen illusionist, Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman devoted his career to transporting viewers to realms beyond their wildest imagining. The deft, breathtaking combinations of live action and animation techniques that he pioneered in the postwar years earned him comparisons to legends such as Georges Méliès, and an array of followers that includes Jan Švankmajer, Terry Gilliam, and Wes Anderson. Presented here are three of Zeman’s most enchanting fantasies—a boys’ adventure into the mists of prehistory, a Jules Verne–derived flight of fancy, and an exotic eighteenth-century tall tale—all of them treasure chests of wondrous sights, tactile textures, and headlong yarn-spinning that helped put Czechoslovak cinema on the international map.