14.01.26, 20:30, The Pied Piper (1986)

The sun rises slowly over Hamelin while underground a cogwheel begins to turn. What appears to be a lively town quickly turns into a mirror of human greed. The wealthy citizens lock themselves away in their own greed, until the town succumbs to its stench of abundance and attracts a relentless swarm of rats. Then a stranger appears with a flute, hired to drive away the plague, but his melody attracts more than just rodents. When Hamelin breaks its promise, the music turns against its inhabitants.

The Pied Piper is Jirí Barta's visionary retelling of the German legend, inspired by Viktor Dyk's sombre 1911 novella Krysarˇ. In this expressionist animated fairy tale, wood, metal and skin merge into a dark tableau. The rats, filmed in flashes of live action, seem more alive than the humans themselves. In their incomprehensible Germanic dialect, the inhabitants sound like puppets of flesh and guilt. The Pied Piper is a cautionary woodcut about greed, betrayal and the price of human desire.

This film is preceded by the short film Historia Naturae, Suita (1967) by Jan Švankmajer.