According to a press release, the films to be screened during the festival are "united by a seemingly similar fictional spacetime, the central theme of sci-fi: outer space and foreign planets in the near or far future."

All the movies date from between 1959 and 1988, a time when the Eastern and Western blocs were separated by the Iron Curtain and characterized by a space race between the two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

The movies were (co)produced in states that, in one way or another, had fallen victim to Russian "communist" colonialism. Thus, in the films, two typically mutually exclusive perspectives intertwine: that of the (fictional) colonizer and the (actual) colonized.

"The development of Eastern Europe in the 20th century was a dystopian dumbing down of a utopian vision of the future. The film selection reflects this in one way or another," said Siim Angerpikk, one of the program's curators.

"The films interweave several perspectives that seem to exclude each other: criticism of capitalism and hatred of the West, the quest for cosmic equality and a culturally imperialist view, faith in technological progress and yet fear of it. Yet, just as the universe is full of the imaginable and the unthinkable, these films are in fact each from a world of their own, bringing us strange visions of the future from the past," Angerpikk added.

Stalking Eastern Europe is part of the International Literary Festival Prima Vista: "Futures Better and Worse," which is in the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 main program.

Each film screening will be enriched by special guests, who will discuss the films and their themes. Among the guests are space psychologist Andres Käosaar, science fiction expert Jüri Kallas and several renowned science fiction scholars, who will be attending the international science fiction scholars' conference "Transitions" which takes place in Tartu at the same time.

According to Eva Näripea, Director of the Estonian National Archive's film archive and the program's co-curator, the legacy of Eastern European science fiction cinema offers fun, retro entertainment, enjoyable aesthetic experiences and thought-provoking viewing.

"These films reflect the fears and hopes of their time, some of which are still very relevant today, such as humanity's relationship with technology, including the artificial heart. And while the context of the time of production has left its ideological mark on Eastern European science fiction, almost every film also has a note of critique for the repressive regime. Because, under the guise of an inherently unrealistic genre, more could be said than in some other forms of expression, which more directly portrayed the surrounding reality," Näripea said.

"Stalking Eastern Europe" takes place at Tartu's Elektriteater from May 6 to 12.

More information about the program is available here.

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