CutPrintFilm is a cinema website which features reviews, interview, news and articles on broad topics in cinema; including this wonderful editorial on the history of stop-motion animation.
Jan Švankmajer’s “Punch and Judy” opens with windup monkeys playing, and a mechanically synchronized family scene. The short then shifts, to focus on the traditional puppet show characters Punch and Judy as they fight to the death over the ownership of a live guinea pig.
Often called the mother of Czech animation, Hermína Týrlová was a pioneer in the long Czech tradition of puppet and stop-motion animation. She helped to found animation production at the major company Ziln Studios and produced several fundamental puppet animations.
Jan Švankmajer is a Czechoslovakian surrealist artist, filmmaker and animator, whose work revolves around the stop-motion animation of everyday objects and an exploration of their dark, visceral and tactile qualities.