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For the discerning science fiction fan, this is the best of the Eastern-bloc Cold War Sci-fi epics, a genuinely brilliant and warmly human ‘Voyage to the End of the Universe,’ restored in 4k resolution. It’s from before 2001: A Space Odyssey, and has an equally wondrous but totally different vision of the future.

Ikarie Xb 1

Blu-ray

Nfa (Czechoslovak National Film Archive)

1963 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 88 min. / Street Date March, 2017

Starring: Radovan Lukavský, Zdenek Stepánek, Frantisek Smolík, Otto Lackovic, Irena Kacírková Dana Medrická

Cinematography: Jan Kalis, Sasa Rasilov

Production Designer: Jan Zázvorka

Special Effects: Jan Kalis

Film Editor: Josef Dobrichovský

Original Music: Zdenek Liska

Written by Jindrich Polák and Pavel Jurácek, adapted from the novel The Magellanic Cloud by Stanislaus Lem.

Produced by Filmové Studio Barrandov

Directed by Jindrich Polák

The trailer for the new restoration of Ikarie Xb 1 (no hyphen) pretty much tells the story. A shot...

★★★★☆ "Heaven forbid if he ever comes back," intones a village elder as Martin Lepiš, otherwise known as 'Dragon' (Radovan Lukavský), is led, restrained, into exile. This sequence is told in flashback to give context to the thick atmosphere of Eduard Grečner's Dragon's Return (1968). A brooding and mythic drama, it tells a simple folktale of a hamlet in the Tatra Mountains and uses modernist techniques to explore themes of community, exclusion and lost love. It's most notable innovation is the use of a particular telephoto lens that flattens and blurs the landscapes of Vincent Rosinec's arresting cinematography, placing emphasis on the characters set against an almost elemental backdrop.

Many—maybe too many, looking at this bunch of bone-tired warriors of Av-virtue—were the travels the Ferroni Brigade embarked on all through 2011: oftentimes for festivals all over Europe, sometimes for visits to this archive or that as part of our programming arbeit (to be read with a Japanese drawl). During those months in the dark, we saw a lot—some of which chimed and rhymed with new works we encountered in this multiplex back home or that gallery abroad, on this collector's Steenbeck or in that producer's private projection room (they still exist).

On one of those trips, we were joined by our main Mubi-man, His Kasness a.k.a. the Kasest with whom we plunged one evening into a brainstorming on what The Festival would look and feel like (truth be told: it was more like a communal delirium—but what do you expect from folks sitting...