Lubor Tokoš

This eye-popping escapade revolves around a scientist and his doomsday machine—and the pirates who will stop at nothing to gain possession of it. Freely adapting the fiction of Jules Verne, and inspired by Victorian line engravings, Karel Zeman surrounds his actors with animated scenery of breathtaking intricacy and complexity, constructing an impossibly vivid proto-steampunk world. Released abroad at the turn of the 1960s, INVENTION FOR DESTRUCTION went on to become one of the most internationally successful Czechoslovak films of all time.

Czech schoolboy Jenik has an unconventional home life. His father is a shipboard doctor who spends long stretches at sea, and his overprotective mother won't let him play with the rough neighborhood boys. As he makes friends with fellow misfit Lucy, his father sends him a butterfly larva from an exotic port of call. When Jenik and Lucy hatch it, a magical fairy appears in their lives.