A Jester's Tale (1964) DVD

The legendary, visionary Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman has been a profound influence on whole generations of filmmakers from Jan Svankmajer to Tim Burton, the Quay Brothers to Terry Gilliam. His ground-breaking innovations in the use of live-action and animation mark him as one of the great masters of 20th Century fantasy cinema. A JESTER'S TALE is one of his most renowned and celebrated achievments. Described by Zeman as a "pseudo-historical" film, it is a bold anti-war black comedy following the adventures of a plowboy and a mercenary, press-ganged into service on the battlefields of the Thirty Years War of 1618 - 1648.

Co-scripted by Pavel Juracek (Ikarie XB1, Daisies, Josef Kilián), Karel Zeman's brilliant comic film with its melding of live-action and animation, extraordinary matte work along with Escher-inspired impossible constructions, anticipates Gilliam's Monty Python animations (not to mention 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' and Gilliam's own 'Jabberwocky' and 'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen'). It also emerges as a sharp satire of war, human nature and of our very understanding of history itself.