Animation Legends Quay Brothers Head to ‘Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass’ Where ‘Mystery Is a Potent Force’ (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Marta Balaga Animation veterans Stephen and Timothy Quay return to feature films — and to the works of Polish Jewish writer Bruno Schulz — with Venice premiere “Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.” Sold by the Match Factory, watch its exclusive clip here: They discovered Shulz back in the 1970s; incidentally, that’s also when Polish filmmaker Wojciech Jerzy made a film based on the same story. “When we visited poster designer Andrzej Klimowski in Warsaw, he introduced us not only to Schulz, but also his contemporaries Gombrowicz and Witkacy, along with the music of Krzysztof Komeda and Ewa Demarczyk,” they recall, mentioning other important Polish artists.

The Quay brothers prefer to be quoted together. “Suddenly, the world of Bruno Schulz materialized into our psyches and into our hands.

It was particularly through his ‘Treatise on Tailor’s Dummies’ that we found an entry point into what animation could bring to the world of Schulz and Schulz to the world of animation.” Although it has been 19 years since their last feature “The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes,” they already adapted his “unadaptable” work in “Street of Crocodiles.” But they still won’t take credit for introducing him to a whole new audience. “Unfortunately, a good majority of people didn’t know, or care, that it was based on Schulz’s short story.

They thought it was nothing more than a bunch of gothic puppets caught in some labyrinthine maze,” they say. Unable to separate Schulz’s life from his work — “This new feature is secretly, if not entirely, dedicated to his ‘J’: Józefina Szelińska, whom he’d been engaged to but never married” — they echo his pain, as well as his tragic end.