Film programme accompanying the exhibition “Cosmos Calling! Art and Science in the Long Sixties”

The sky calls
dir. Aleksandr Kozyr, Michaił Kariukow
ZSRR, 1959, 71 min

The practice of adapting Eastern-Bloc sci-fi movies for the Western market – by means of plot changes, re-cutting, new scenes, and voice dubbing – shows clearly that in the Cold War realities the imagination of viewers on both sides of the Iron Curtain fed on the same anxieties and fascinations, and it was only the orientation of the narrative that endowed them with different meanings. Among the productions that functioned in two – ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ – versions was the spectacular Nebo Zovyot [The sky calls] (dir. Mikhail Karyukov and Alexandr Kozyr, 1959), which told the story of a Soviet-US space race to conquer Mars. The English-language re-edit, directed by the young Francis Ford Coppola, was launched in 1962 as Battle Beyond the Sun (even though no actual battle takes place in the film), with all references to the US-Soviet conflict removed and the two countries’ names replaced with those of two fictional superpowers: Northern and Southern.

Film screenings in the garden next to the Club/Café Eufemia (the rector’s building of the Academy of the Fine Arts, Krakowskie Przedmieście 5), entrance from Wacław Niżyński passage
entrance free