Soviet juvenile SF films from the 1970s November 23, 2013
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture, Science Fiction, Uncategorized.trackback
Here’s a real oddity, a Soviet juvenile SF film from the early 1970s, Moscow-Cassiopeia, that is clearly influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey… at least in the sets and in some of the visuals. Padded walls (that’s not a joke, or is it?), psychedelic lighting effects that Warhol and the Factory would have approved of, they’re all here, though the spaceship isn’t much cop. And that star map on a transparent plastic sheet you’ll see in one of the clips is very 1950s. And as if that’s not enough, the first clip shows clips from both that and from another Soviet film, ‘Teenagers in Space’ as well.
You’ll find Moscow-Cassiopeia in all it’s glory in full on Youtube, not sure about Teenagers in Space (which might be a sequel to M-C, now I think about it).
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Reblogged this on msamba.
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Reblogged this on http://www.seanmunger.com and commented:
Here’s a genre of film I bet you didn’t even know existed: Soviet kids in space movies! I didn’t know they existed either, but this cool blog entry (which includes video clips) set me right. Bizarre!
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Fascinating stuff.
On the subject of speculative fictions, an American writer had
just won an award for a SF novel in Scots Gaelic :
“AN AMERICAN writer has landed one of Scotland’s flagship literary prizes – with the first ever Gaelic science fiction novel.
Tim Armstrong, a former singer in a Gaelic punk rock band, has scooped the Saltire Society’s prestigious “first book” prize with his book “Air Cuan Dubh Drilseach” (On a Glittering Black Sea).”
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/arts/news/gaelic-science-fiction-novel-wins-literary-prize-1-3189330
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Its just come out in London that those slaves (which included an Irish woman) were members of a mad Trotskyite cult
http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/world/slavery-women-in-collective-615106.html
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Although this is not an Open Thread and one searches the Examiner story in vain for the term “Trotskyite”.
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Unless you know something we don’t Pj I see no description of a Trot cult
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Speculation on the leftist trainspotters discussion list and the (Brixton based) Urban75 website has centred on a particularly odd Maoist grouplet, which had an emphasis on collective living and which seemed to disappear some 30 years ago. This may, of course, turn out to be incorrect and the people concerned may turn out to have a quite different background – the police statements are neither detailed enough, nor necessarily reliable enough for anyone to be sure.
Any thoughts, PJ?
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It reminds me a bit, this rushing to judgement as to the identity of the group as supposedly Trotskyist, of the British royal’s motto.
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Well, PJ has something of an agenda here. If this was the end product of a left wing political grouping, it was always likely to be Maoist, New Agey or lifestyle Anarchist, simply because you tend to get more in the way of communes and living collectives in those circles.
The Telegraph are now saying that the group in question were in fact Maoists and the details they give strongly implying that it’s some remnant of the group I was talking about above, the Workers Institute for Marxism Leninism Mao Zedong Thought. If it is them, there’s a certain Cedar Lounge left archive connection, in that the WI were a splinter from the Communist Party of England (Marxist Leninist), the name the British Hardial Bains outfit were trading under at the time. The CPE(ML) were the sister group of the Internationalists / CPI(ML). That they kicked out the founders of the Workers Institute for being nutters should give you an insight into the degree of weirdness we are talking about here.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10471517/Slavery-case-two-arrested-ran-a-revolutionary-Communist-collective.html
The WIFMLMZT were periodically the subject of amused/horrified/baffled anecdotes on the leftist trainspotters mailing list, featuring as perhaps the zaniest British left group ever. If there remnant really is the group involved in this story, the joke just got a hell of a lot less funny.
I don’t anticipate PJ returning to this discussion, by the way.
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Christ, my spelling and grammar there is terrible.
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Hello
Hope all here are well
only tangentially related to this, can anyone remember the name of an eastern-bloc cartoon made during the cold war called something like the “hidden planet”? it was made in the 60s or 70s and had something to do with earth being bombarded by aliens from the aformentioned planet.
It wasnt soviet, it may have been czech…
many thanks!
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[…] and LGBT pride in Ireland, there are interesting and quirky asides on all manner of topics, like weird 1970s Soviet sci-fi kids films and retro space missions. Cedar Lounge is an example of a blog with a primary mission but which […]
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