Andrei Tarkovsky's classics Solaris and Stalker get three screenings each - both on 35mm - along with single screenings of diverse host of rarely - if ever - seen titles from Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Russia, and Estonia. It's an incredibly diverse lineup of films ranging from philosophical scifi to open propaganda to swinging adventure, bearded ladies, comic books come to life and a vampire car.
Included in the series are Stalker, Solaris, I Killed Einstein Gentlemen, The Dead Mountaineer's Hotel, Test Pilot Pirxa, Moscow Cassiopeia / Adolescents In The Universe, Ferat Vampire, The Great Space Voyage, Who Wants To Kill Jessie, In The Dust Of The Stars, Eolomea, The Silent Star, To The Stars By Hard Ways, Planet Of Storms, Ikarie XB-1 and Golem.The Cold War was the unquestioned Golden Age of science fiction, as the utopian hopes and apocalyptic fears of the post-Hiroshima age, and the rising tensions of a world dominated by two great superpowers, seeped into all avenues of popular culture. Yet while we are well-acquainted with the forms these futuristic fantasies took in the United States -- from the energetic exploitation fare of Roger Corman to the philosophical speculation of Stanley Kubrick to the pop-culture mythmaking of George Lucas -- and such other Western-aligned nations as the UK (Doctor Who, the Quatermass series) and Japan (Godzilla and his rubber-suited kin, the sunny Astro Boy and the dystopian Akira), we are considerably less familiar with the science-fiction offerings from the other side of the Iron Curtain.
The science-fiction tradition in the one-time Eastern Bloc was as rich and varied as anywhere in the Western world, and the region's film output is every bit as diverse as our own, ranging from art-house fare to populist comedies, hilariously cheesy space operas and grand adventures. And while there are some instances of open propaganda, there are also strains of sly satire -- as well as evidence that the camp and excess of the swinging sixties didn't completely pass the Soviet world by. We present here a broad range of Soviet-era science fiction, a mix of acknowledged classics and outright pulp from Russia, the former Czechoslovakia, Poland and Estonia. Bearded ladies, post-apocalyptic wastelands, robot companions, vampire cars and outbursts of random dancing all wait within. Join us, comrades!
Tickets are available for sale on the TIFF website now and watch for giveaways here on ScreenAnarchy in coming days.