Recently re-reading Clare Kitson's essay on the 1988 surrealist adaptation of AAIW, Alice, I was struck by a rather unusual section.
Kitson was a commissioning editor for animation at UK TV's channel 4 in the late 80s, where she oversaw part of the funding for Jan Svankmajer's Alice.
Due to pressure from the then Czech government, as his short films had grown increasingly political, svankmajer had sought out international money to fund Alice.
Amazingly Kitson notes that "channel 4 boldly signed the deal, comitting £70,000... in the full knowledge that.... the film may not even get made"
Here's where the story becomes curiouser and curiouser. The other commissioner of the film, German TV channel Hessischer Rundfunk, had offered up the money from the children's department. Yet Svankmajer's film is absolutely not for children.
To solve this, a strange compromise was struck. Channel 4 would show the film in full at midnight, in keeping with their late night offerings which had a reputation for being unusual or in some way controversial.
The film would also be cut into 6 episodes and shown to a family audience over the Christmas holidays.
"the film was sold as a six-episode serial as well as a feature film. Both versions have been aired on Channel 4." (Animesuperhero)
Channel 4 worked with the ITC (UK TV content regulators, now called ofcom) to cut any content which was deemed unsuitable for a young audience. This would have likely been a mammoth task.
What was cut for this version? Clare Kitson remembers that "the nails in the pot of jam (during the rabbit hole scene) were removed"
Finding any record of this cut version is nigh on impossible. Sadly there appears to be no real record of this except for Clare Kitson's essay for the BFI.
I would honestly love to find this cut version. It sounds fascinating!
UPDATE 6/9/10:
I have managed to find a TV Schedule for December 1989 which confirms that yes, the 6 part vesrion does indeed exist.
A further look into the BFI archives reveals 3 tapes, one stated as with voiceover at the beginning and end. It also has a runtime of 13 minutes, which is plausible for this cut version.
