{"id":29728,"date":"2026-02-11T16:30:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T16:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=29728"},"modified":"2026-02-11T14:09:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T14:09:44","slug":"turris-babel-a-film-by-jan-mimra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2026\/02\/11\/turris-babel-a-film-by-jan-mimra\/","title":{"rendered":"Turris Babel, a film by Jan Mimra"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"babel1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Another short animation, a collage film<\/a> from 1989 which concerns everyone’s favourite Biblical megastructure, the Tower of Babel. Jan Mimra’s film doesn’t recount the creation of the building but uses the tower as a symbol for the human world, its history and its culture. The building itself is a hybrid structure made of architectural elements from the whole of human history, with a pyramid at the base and a platform at the summit supporting a collection of modern tower blocks.<\/p>\n

\"babel2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The narrative purpose of Mimra’s tower is never very clear; to judge by the soundtrack the fragmentation of a universal language has already occurred, even though the Biblical story has this taking place only after the tower has been destroyed. There’s further confusion in a flood which threatens the tower and its inhabitants, something which may be another Biblical reference but could equally be a metaphor for modern warfare (the sinister planes suggest as much) or even climate change. Mimra’s film was made at the Ji\u0159\u00ed Trnka Studio in Prague, and includes a reference to another Czech collage animator, Karel Zeman, in a brief glimpse of Jules Verne piloting the paddling submarine from Zeman’s The Invention for Destruction<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Babel details<\/a>
\n\u2022 Athanasius Kircher\u2019s Tower of Babel<\/a>
\n\u2022 La Tour by Schuiten & Peeters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another short animation, a collage film from 1989 which concerns everyone’s favourite Biblical megastructure, the Tower of Babel. Jan Mimra’s film doesn’t recount the creation of the building but uses the tower as a symbol for the human world, its history and its culture. The building itself is a hybrid structure made of architectural elements … Continue reading “Turris Babel, a film by Jan Mimra”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Turris Babel, a film by Jan Mimra","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,7],"tags":[14405,715,191,4609],"class_list":["post-29728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animation","category-film","tag-jan-mimra","tag-jules-verne","tag-karel-zeman","tag-tower-of-babel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-7Ju","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}