AustLit

One of surrealist film-maker Dusan Marek's earliest films (made the same year as Fisherman's Holiday), Light of the Darkness was made in Sydney shortly after Marek's arrival in Australia.

According to Alex Gerbaz, the film is 'silent and mysterious', using stop-motion animation and plasticine figurines:

Among its characters are a rubbery-armed man standing outside a milk bar, a girl sunbaking at the beach, a man who appears to lose his feet, and a prisoner whose face is intercut in the final scene with an image of Marek himself. (p.2)

Stephen Mould suggests that the film (which he summarises as 'a series of visionary scenes loosely tied together by a story which revolves around a wizard-like figure who creates a large egg') 'demonstrates the conflict in his work - his established, European, surrealist style attempting to merge with the many new visual stimuli he found in Australia' (p.8): he notes, for example, that 'Blocks of apartments, reminiscent of centrla European cities hover above the streetscape, where one encounters an Australian-style corner shop advertising Peter's ice cream' (p.8).

Further Reference:

Gerbaz, Alex. 'Innovations in Australian Cinema: An Historical Outline of Australian Experimental Film', Journal of the National Film and Sound Archives 3.1 (2008): 1-12.

Mould, Stephen. 'Dusan Marek: A Landlocked Czech Surrealist in the Antipodes', Papers of Surrealism 6 (Autumn 2007): 1-19.