If there were ever an excuse to cut that end-of-summer trip to the beach short, this is it. Strange Lands: International Sci-Fi, the most far-out cinematic experience in this or any other galaxy, is happening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City from August 22– 28. The film series highlights 11 under-seen foreign language science fiction movies that bend the definition of the genre as well as the mind. Each night of the mini-festival, the Walter Reade Theater screens a double-feature from a different country, and many of the productions date from the mid-1960s through the 1980s.
Curated by Film Comment’s senior editor Nicolas Rapold, all but one of the films is a 35mm print. (Rapold decided that in one case the DCP was actually preferable. Purists can throw their celluloid-covered tomatoes at him should he be spotted strolling by the Lincoln Center reflecting pool.) Many of these films are unavailable for Region 1 DVD players, hardly any of them have the recognition they deserve.
As a sci-fi enthusiast, my jaw left my skull’s orbit when I read that all of these titles would be shown back to back at such a fine facility. Especially considering that, and I hope no one will rat me out to my nerdcore friends, there were so many I had yet to actually see. There’s nary a Solaris, Fantastic Planet or The Face of Another in the bunch. Those are all far too common.
My favourite pairing is probably the two from East Germany, Gottfried Kolditz’s 1976 In The Dust of Stars with Herrmann Zscoche’s Eolomea. While the two share some production aspects (those fabulous costumes!) they couldn’t be more different in tone. Dust, which has a bit of an early Star Trek vibe, follows a ship of exploration to a peculiar and ultimately dangerous planet, and as such dips its toe in a bit of pulpy whiz-bang camp. But the strong female captain and her down-to-party crew eventually make a stand for workers’ rights, despite the many passed aerosol cans that give everyone the giggles. Eolomea is far more serious, showing us a spacefaring future Earth that can conquer the stars, but can’t conquer bureaucracy. Despite an incredible emphasis on design and visual effects “people are just sitting at desks!” Rapold remarks with some wonderment at its hinted political commentary.
From Czechoslovakia comes another case of extremes. Karel Zeman was a filmmaker and animator whose playful and inventive use of mixed media influenced Ray Harryhausen, Terry Gilliam and Wes Anderson. In Prague there is a prominent museum dedicated exclusively to his work. In the United States, his films are barely available. Rapold chose his 1958 Fabulous Life of Jules Verne and its droll nature to represent the “limitlessness of science fiction”. It will contrast sharply with the second feature, Jan Schmidt’s 1967 film The End of August at the Hotel Ozone, a bleak, nihilistic tale of a band of women wandering a violent apocalyptic landscape. (Let’s hope the kids clear out after the first movie.)
“The movie begins like the ending of Fail Safe,” Rapold says of August. “It’s a montage of countdowns from around the world, where everyone launched their missiles. It’s such a sardonic, perversely witty way to start a movie that describes the end of the world.”
Another highlight is the night focused on the Soviet Union. Georgiy Daneliya’s interplanetary comedy Kin-Dza-Dza! is beloved by millions but good luck finding a quality English dub. This absurdist masterpiece takes a weary Russian worker and a wide-eyed Georgian violin student and plops them on a bizarre desert planet loaded with ridiculous social codes. The 1986 film is “no doubt dealing with perestroika and reforms in a coded manner,” Rapold says, “but is also simply a terrific satire of travelling and being out of your element.” A sunnier animated remake was released to great success in Russia just last year.
Kin-Dza-Dza! will be screened alongside Alexander Sokurov’s 1988 film Days of Eclipse. Based on a work by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky (whose writings were also adapted into the films Stalker and Hard To Be A God), Days of Eclipse is a hallucinatory swirl that mixes ethnographic elements shot in Turkmenistan to tell its story of a doctor encountering unexplained phenomena. Sokurov, who later made Russian Ark (also known as the “all-in-one-take” trip through the Hermitage Museum film) and the last-days-of-Hirohito drama The Sun, is definitely a “head” filmmaker, making for quite the contrast with the belly laughs of Kin-Dza-Dza!
Elio Petri’s 1965 Italian film “The 10th Victim” is probably the best-known film in the collection, based on a Hunger Games-esque Robert Sheckley short story about a futuristic society that keeps violence in check with an elaborate system of human hunting competitions. Starring Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress, it is a powerhouse of modernist design. “These ideas can percolate down, but when they make their way to film, they can have the appropriate stamp,” Rapold remarks.
It is paired with a 1974 picture, Morel’s Invention, based on an Adolfo Bioy Casares’s book that, quite frankly, put me to sleep in record time. Can’t win ’em all.
Two films from Poland that I was unable to pre-screen, Edward Zebrowski’s Hospital of the Transfiguration (based on a Stanislaw Lem novel) from 1979, and Piotr Szulkin’s Golem (loosely based on the Jewish myth) from 1980, also round out the collection. (Rapold tells me that Hospital is “just barely sci-fi,” but included it in the context of other Lem adaptations, from the classic Solaris to the soon-to-be-released The Congress.)
Lastly, cranking the series up to 11, is a West German film that isn’t paired with anything, but what could possibly stand alongside it? Ulrike Ottinger’s 1981 picture Freak Orlando isn’t necessarily science fiction – it may be better considered a “midnight film”. Like a mix of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Fando y Lis crossed with David Greene’s 1973 film of Godspell, this vaguely Virginia Woolf-inspired collection of tableaux is a hodge-podge of various well-known myths, as if Peter Greenaway were to shoot a circus sideshow on the set of Logan’s Run. I am in no way suggesting that this movie is, you know, actually any good, but it is something you should see if you have an interest in out-there cinema.
The collection as a whole speaks to the elasticity of science fiction, from zippy kids’ stuff to the literary to the edgy and avant-garde. Curator Rapold tells me there’s still plenty left for a sequel, by going deeper into the vaults (“Czechoslovakia really lends itself to this sort of thing”) as well as visiting yet-unrepresented “strange lands”.
- Strange Lands opens at the Lincoln Center on August 22. Ticketing info available at Film Society of Lincoln Center’s website
