Watch Franz Kafka, the Wonderful Animated Film by Piotr Dumala


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.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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


by | Permalink | Comments (5) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (5)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Heath Filmore says:

    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.

  • Alena says:

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

  • Martin Cunningham says:

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

  • zeitzug says:

    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

  • Peter Leiss says:

    Beau­ti­ful film, many thanks!

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.