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Czech - Imagination

Ikarie XB 1

Jindrich POLÁK

Czech Republic1963 86 min 35mm BW

Synopsis

The most famous Czech science fiction film, the only successful attempt of an original "East European" space opera. Not a B-movie, but directed and written by the best Czech filmmakers and with the best Czech actors of the 1960s as a cast. Of real interest is very elaborate design of spaceship interior and also the ship-board routines which create very similar feeling as in later US/UK series and films as Star Trek and Space 1999. The savagely cut US/UK release (with additional footage) was distributed in the United States shortly after its original release under the name Voyage to the End of the Universe. It is very freely inspired by early novels by a famous Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem and the leading Czech science fiction montly magazine Ikarie (1990-) was named after the film.(Jaroslav Olsa, jr)

Diretor

Jindrich POLÁK

Famous Czech film director started his carrier as an assistant to Academy award winners Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos. His debut was Smrt v (Death in the Saddle, 1958) an attempt to film communist-acceptable version of US western films. His Ikarie XB-1 (1963) is the most elaborate Czech hard core science fiction film ever made.