Work in Outer Space: Notes on Eastern European Science Fiction Cinema

Science fiction cinema, particularly of the futuristic variety, is an interesting site for considering work because it typically privileges public and semipublic spaces and professional situations, projecting into future both current concerns and imagined solutions, even if work is often foregrounded as an exciting adventure rather than prosaic travail. These generic characteristics constitute a good match with the tenets of socialist realism as practiced in the former Soviet bloc (Radynski 2009), which in its fictional narratives tended to give preference to work at the expense of romance. This study looks at a sample of Eastern European science fiction films centered around voyages into outer space, such as Kurt Maetzig’s The Silent Star (Der schweigende Stern / Milcząca Gwiazda, 1960, Poland/GDR), Jindřich Polak’s Ikarie XB-1 (1961, Czechoslovakia), Pavel Klushantsev’s Planet of Storms (Planeta Bur, 1962, Soviet Union), Herrmann Zschoche’s Eolomea (1972, GDR/Soviet Union/Bulgaria), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972, Soviet Union), Gottfried Kolditz’s In the Dust of the Stars (Im Staub der Sterne, 1976, GDR/Romania), and Marek Piestrak’s The Test of Pilot Pirx (Test pilota Pirxa / Navigaator Pirx, 1979, Poland/Soviet Union). I will concentrate on recurring motifs related to work, illuminating briefly certain features shared with their Western generic counterparts, even if at times their semantics of representation diverge radically.