The Distress of Matter: Materiality in the Film The Cybernetic Grandmother

The main goal of the masters diploma thesis is to explore materiality of Czech stop-motion animated film The Cybernetic Grandmother. Here, the film is identified as dystopia. The thesis examines how dystopia is embodied in this film material and moreover, the way it touches wievers on several layers. Through the perspective of Space Age, design (namely Brussels style and Expo 58 aesthetics) and technoscepticism of the time, it analyses context of film's production times from the perspective of materiality in the first chapter. It significantly works with the theories of film tactility and haptic visuality to analyse topics of childhood, memory, play, tradition and familiy relationships in the film. Finally, the thesis focuses on film's materiality as an artwork. In this part, it discusses several artistic approaches and abstract aspects of the film (including music). Based on this, it inspects how the film's dystopia can become bodily and tangible. Keywords materiality, tactility, dystopia, animated film, Jiří Trnka, The Cybernetic Grandmother