Invention for Destruction // MACHINE MADNESS (Animation Club)

All month long, Animation Club celebrates imaginative inventions gone wrong in a series called, "MACHINE MADNESS" From airships and doomsday devices lifted off the pages of Jules Verne, to faulty mechanized trousers, and sentient robot healthcare beds. Live action, stop motion, and old-school anime bring to life chaotic contraptions of all kinds, in all their absurd, destructive glory!

Dir. Karel Zeman / 1958 / 81m

This eye-popping escapade revolves around a scientist and his doomsday machine—and the pirates who will stop at nothing to gain possession of it. Freely adapting the fiction of Jules Verne, and inspired by Victorian line engravings, Karel Zeman surrounds his actors with animated scenery of breathtaking intricacy and complexity, constructing an impossibly vivid proto-steampunk world. Released abroad at the turn of the 1960s, Invention for Destruction went on to become one of the most internationally successful Czechoslovak films of all time.

'ANIMATION CLUB' is an ongoing series that celebrates new and classic animated films from around the world! From studio titans to hidden indie gems; traditional 2D to stop-motion, 3D animation, experimental, and everything in-between!

Host or Publisher Stray Cat Film Center