Editorial

Eastern European science fiction cinema is a terrain of gradually growing scholarly interest, but still relatively under-researched, at least in English-speaking academia, compared to the much-celebrated histories of auteurist forms of expression that continue to dominate the scholarship on Eastern European cinemas. At the same time, a number of Eastern European science-fiction screen works of the Communist period enjoyed great popularity (even if not critical acclaim) during their time of release, and have later established the status of cult films, testifying to their cultural and social significance. It must also be stressed from the outset that the audience appeal of science fiction productions most likely stemmed not only from their politically mischievous innuendos but at least to an equal degree from the thrill and pleasure these often narratively bizarre and visually striking films provided to generations of cinema-goers brought up on a stale diet of socialist realist repertoire.

Eastern European science fiction films are frequently read as allegories, and sometimes also parodies, of political, social and everyday realities and histories of the socialist, as well as post-socialist, period. While the substantial production values of some of the most spectacular, typically co-produced, socialist science fiction might have called for docile confirmations of official ideological stances, the contributions to this Special Issue reveal that critiques of the status quo, or ideologically ambivalent positions, were also not unusual, especially in films marginal in one sense or another (e.g. shorts, animation films, etc.). In fact, the very generic/aesthetic characteristics of science fiction – its inherent detachment from the ‘real’ – provided filmmakers a chance to use the genre as a form of Aesopian language in order to comment or criticise the political, social and everyday realities. But even if these opportunities were not taken up intentionally, the results have often been considered telling in terms of revealing ‘the wishes, hopes, fears, inner stresses and tensions of an era’, as H. L. Gold has proposed in relation to the science fiction genre in general (H. L. Gold, quoted in Kuhn 1990, 15).

Drawing on Christian Metz, Robert Stam has aptly noted that ‘film's multitrack nature makes it possible to stage ironic contradictions…the cinema offers synergistic possibilities of disunity and disjunction…The possible contradictions and tensions between tracks become an aesthetic resource, opening the way to a multitemporal, polyrhythmic art form’ (Stam 2005, 20–23). In the context of the former Eastern bloc, it is also important to stress that the censorship principally operated on the level of the screenplay, i.e. the verbal rendering of a film, which means that non-scripted or loosely scripted aspects of cinematography, mise-en-scène and music created opportunities to inflect the meaning of a film as a whole. As already noted, sometimes these loopholes were intentionally exploited, while in other cases the emerging ambiguities were quite accidental but equally intriguing.

Another common feature of Eastern European science fiction films, which is partly linked to questions of ideology, is their frequent and usually rather intriguing references to western (popular) culture, art and commodities – often betraying envy rather than criticism. Or, as Małgorzata Bugaj aptly summarises in her contribution to this issue, Eastern European ‘science fiction cinema of the socialist era strongly suggested that the future will take the shape of the capitalist West's present’.

The films discussed on the following pages reflect on the realities of state socialism also because many of them were made on a relatively small budget and using relatively primitive conditions in terms of special effects. However, their creators tried to overcome the limits of meagre means by, for example, using plots that were more suitable to the conditions of scarcity or co-producing films with partners from other socialist countries. As a result, while national/local particularities, stemming from specific cultural as well as social and political contexts, are not without significance, the articles in this Special Issue highlight the international, and perhaps also transnational traits and currents of the genre, often beyond the Eastern bloc, particularly in terms of recurring viewpoints, themes and motifs. As already indicated, cross-regional patterns of cooperation are highly significant for Eastern European science fiction cinema, even if this Special Issue focuses on nationally produced examples of the region's science-fiction output. Indeed, despite being cut-off from the West by the Iron Curtain, the films examined below testify of the global nature of the science-fiction genre, as the fundamental tropes are often the same: for instance, time travel, journeys to outer space, visions of future societies (whether utopian or dystopian), (the threat of) nuclear war, (mad) scientists, alien invaders, AI and experiments-gone-awry on the human body and mind. In part due to this implicit disposition to transnationalism, Eastern European science fiction film, in general, travelled well and enjoyed international distribution, as opposed to, for instance, comedies that were far more difficult to get across to the audiences beyond national borders.

The relatively low budgets of science-fiction productions, especially outside the Russian ‘metropole’ of the Eastern bloc, in combination with the genre's apparent separation from the immediate realities, provided a fertile ground for inventiveness and experimentation, both in material and ideological terms. These opportunities were sometimes recognised and put to test by filmmakers who have become to be known as the most celebrated auteurs of Eastern European cinema, such as Andrzej Wajda, or by lesser known directors with equally earnest artistic ambitions, such as Estonian Avo Paistik. Considering the relationship between authorial expression and generic ‘norms’, a number of articles in this issue thus provide new perspectives on auteurism in Eastern European cinema. Małgorzata Bugaj's chapter opens an unusual avenue of inquiry into Andrzej Wajda's oeuvre, by analysing his 35-minute TV film Rolly-Polly (Przekładaniec, 1968) as an interesting example of Wajda's style as manifested in a popular genre. By analysing political references and aesthetic choices of Avo Paistik's animated shorts of the late 1970s, Eva Näripea highlights the way Estonian animation filmmakers typically circumnavigated the Soviet censorship that saw animation as primarily a children's genre.

Authorship also worked the other way around – a number of directors demonstrated strong preference for the genre, among them Piotr Szulkin (but also Marek Piestrak) in Poland (discussed by Żaneta Jamrozik) and Václav Vorlícek in Czechoslovakia (discussed by Bruce Williams).

Despite the global appeal of the science fiction genre, the understanding that genres ‘often have local histories’ and ‘perform different cultural work in different places’ (First 2008b, 21) must also be taken into account. In this respect, it needs to be stressed that screen science fiction had a stronger presence in Poland and Czechoslovakia, but also East Germany and Soviet Russia – countries with established traditions of literary science fiction (e.g. Stanisław Lem, Karel Čapek), while elsewhere it made more sporadic occurrences, emerging in relation to various cultural needs. The Hungarian film Sirius (Szíriusz, 1942, directed by Ákos Hamza), is a case in point. As Gábor Gergely argues in this issue, the film mobilised the trope of time travel in the framework of costume drama, in order to ‘conjure up a false analogy between Hungary's twentieth century ruling elite and the modernizing aristocracy of the Reform Age’. In Gergely's reading, Sirius is a reflection of the uneasy relationship of Hungarian nationalism with Nazi Germany prior to and in the early 1940s.

Finally, the case of Sirius draws attention to the important matter of genre hybridity. Many, if not most, films examined in this issue are mixtures of several genres. For instance, Bruce William's subject of study, Who Wants to Kill Jessie? (Kdo chece zabít Jessii?, 1966, directed by Václav Vorlícek), features a mixture of science fiction and comedy. Aside from confirming the now established understanding in genre theory that purebred genres are virtually non-existent (e.g. Gunning 1995; Altman 1995; Knee 1995), in Eastern European context, these generic hybrids also invite (post)colonial interpretations in terms of Bahktinian dialogues between the coloniser(s) and the colonised (Staiger 2012). In relation to this, it is particularly fascinating to observe that these dialogues were less conducted with Soviet Russia, the colonial ‘master’ of the Eastern bloc, and more with Western, specifically Anglo-American, interlocutors on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

The issue closes with four book reviews, a conference and a journal report. Aga Skrodzka presents The Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia: Between Pain and Pleasure, edited by Ewa Mazierska, Matilda Mroz and Elżbieta Ostrowska. Helga Druxes's article reviews the monograph Mothers, Comrades, and Outcasts in East German Women's Film by Jennifer L. Creech. Ewa Mazierska writes about Siranush Galstyan's book Cinema of Armenia: An Overview. Garry Watson reviews Of Elephants and Toothaches: Ethics, Politics, and Religion in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue edited by Eva Badowska and Francesca Parmeggiani. Katalin Sándor's journal report introduces Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: Film and Media Studies edited at Sapientia University in Cluj, Romania. Finally, Marja Hindoalla chronicles The 3rd Baltic Sea Region Film History Conference: World War II and Its Aftermath.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Teadusagentuur.