Never posted anything from the Romanian net-sphere which is a pity. Here is an comprehensive video about social democracy nowadays going into its history, its avatars and current conundrums. It tries to make light in one of the most contentious subjects of recent Romanian history from a leftist perspective, which is quite rare. Most things regarding PSD are clearly centrist and usually completely missing out the historical or global systemic dimension of the subject matter. PSD does not demonized or bashed in the usual way – the tensions and contradictions are made evident in a specific dialectical way. Maybe I have a problem with the technical specifics, the speed of the voice and the way it is drowned inside the barrage of sound, but otherwise we need more of these and more meme friendly political analysis in the manner of dezarticast.
Trivia: One interesting fact is that the celebrated actor Romanian Iurie Darie plays the role of Commander (could not believe my eyes!). S The captain of the ship Laika was played by Piotr Pawlowski. Another characteristic of these movies was their diverse cast – in fact the cast was supposed to reflect a similarly diverse future as well as the realities on board the Interkosmos Soviet space program. So, Polish, East German, Romanian, Serbian and one Egyptian actress Soheir El Morshedy are part of the cast of this SF.
Here is some informationabout the Subharchord, an early electronic sound generator made in East Germany by Gerhard Steinke and used in TV shows, movie soundtracks etc for its futuristic, experimental feel.
And here a cool slide presentation about SF fandom in the GDR with lots of details, about authors, covers SF clubs and SF zine publishing stats.
The movies is generally criticized for its lack of philosophic vacuity or for lack of ideas in comparison with its much more celebrated predecessor 2001 directed by Kubrick (that in its turn got inspiration from Ikarie XB-1 directed by Czechoslovak Jindřich Polák). A strange signal from space arrives and Research Station Ikaros supposed to search for alien life forms, goes mysteriously silent around Jupiter. One strange characteristic is the general non-involvement in matters SF of either the film directors or script writers. There was a gap btw current SF writing in East and these movies, a thing that also sounds familiar with today’s situation when most of the new, exciting and interesting SF voices (with the notable exception of Liu Cixin or Jeff VanderMeer do not manage to see movie adaptations made from their literary oeuvres). For film directors it seems it was mainly just a chance tryout or even something dictated politically, although they had quite a free hand. Another characteristic was that gender equality was actively promoted and women scientists and pilots were treated on equal terms as the men. Architects in contrast, or set designers were much more enthusiastic and many of them probably, we might suppose SF fans that finally found an opportunity to exercise their talents, shape some alien planetary surfaces or spaceship designs.
logo of the Soviet Interkosmos which allow various member states of the Eastern bloc to send their cosmonauts to space
This live performance is the embodiment of our need to perform and create during the lockdown of 2020. Our focus is a visceral live performance where the dialog happens between 2 humans and a real reel to reel tape machine strumming the chords of a guitar used as a resonator, always in feedback. It feels like performing in front of an uncanny aural mirror. We aim to create new textures and music while in dialogue with a machine that is always listening, repeating & varying the pitch of the inputted signal. The resulting symbiosis is focused on the fast-shifting dynamic between humans and technology. The visuals were all created using slow Al Morphs a concept that aesthetically compliments the dialogue between man and machine, always evolving, a constant struggle to build and deconstruct an image with another. This specific shifting dynamic became at the end of our research the artwork itself. The main scene was also filmed and edited in a similar workflow, by transforming pictures of the performers into moving images, it seems like the two performers are two ephemeral creatures, always shifting decomposing, and regenerating their bodies.
timespace coordinates: Christmas Eve, 1920 London / 1910’s Romania
Gray Dawn is a first-person horror game from Romanian independent game studio Interactive Stone.
Embark on a terrifying adventure of a priest accused of murdering an altar boy. Gray Dawn is a psychological thriller infused with religious elements and combines story-driven quests with an artistic experience.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM): – OS: Windows 64-bit, Processor: Intel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320, Memory: 8 GB RAM, Graphics: GeForce GTX 770 / Radeon R9 280X, Storage: 6 GB available space
timespace coordinates:Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár), Romania, capital of Transylvania (Erdély) in 1942 – automatically restored old footage using machine learning. At the time (between 1940-1944) it was part of Hungary, and the original video is from the Hungarian National Film Archives.
TimeSpace Warps 