Scenes from "Krabat" - "The Sorcerers Apprentice" (CARODEJUV UCEN) - 1977, 90 min.

Inspired by an Eastern European folktale, Krabat was written and directed by Zeman, and designed with the assistance of his daughter Ludmila, a noted illustrator of children's books.

In KRABAT, a young boy becomes apprenticed to a notorious sorcerer - but when the magician tries to come between the boy and his girlfriend, the young people organize a revolt pitting true love against wizardry.

In films like THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE and BARON MUNCHAUSEN, Zeman combined cartoon and stop-motion animation, puppetry, matte paintings and live action, creating a fantastic mechanical clockwork that anticipated the work of later animator/directors such as Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. Born in 1910 in Ostromer, Czechoslovakia, Zeman began his career as a window dresser and poster artist, graduating to filmmaking in the mid-1940's with a series of shorts featuring his animated alter-ego, Mr. Prokouk. Inspired by the pioneering films of magician/director Georges Melies and the fiction of Jules Verne, Zeman began animating, art directing and often writing his own features in the early 1950's, overcoming miniscule budgets and rudimentary equipment to create his elaborate adventures. The joy of Zeman's work is often in the details: stop-motion owls against a crescent moon sky, a gold pocketwatch trapped in a bottle, a crew of sailors who literally paint their ship into existence. (less info)