Strange New Worlds: In The Dust of the Stars
The crew awakening as their ship Cynro 19-4 approaches its destination, they have travelled for years to reach TEM 4 following a distress call; radioing their intention to land, there are complications from interference in their systems but with manual intervention Akala is able to get them down safely, navigator Suko remaining behind while the other crewmembers attend an audience with the apparent leader of the inhabitants, Ronk.
Denying there is any need of assistance, the message likely a transmitter test, the meeting is abruptly terminated but the crew are later invited back for a celebration, drinking and dancing with the Temers, returning to their ship in high spirits where Suko questions them on what they managed to learn, his colleagues’ evasions and denials leading him to suspect there has been interference with their memories.
The fourth and final inclusion in Eureka’s Strange New Worlds box set, presented from a 2K scan of the original 35mm camera negatives, In the Dust of the Stars (Im Staub der Sterne) was written and directed by Signals’ Gottfried Kolditz, originally released in 1976 and very much caught in the “new wave” of science fiction of that era, with costume changes from bell-bottom leather pantsuits to kaftans, eye shadow, bizarre interpretive dance routines.
Led by Akala (Jana Brejchová) whose response to a command crisis is a tearful emotional breakdown, the investigative team are stunningly inept, incurious, overly trusting and taking no security precautions despite two proven attempts to sabotage their mission, Thob (Leon Niemczyk) allowing himself to be distracted by the dancing girls and only Suko (Alfred Struwe) striking out and determining there is an underground enslaved population of natives.
Ronk (Milan Beli) presiding over an invading force at the behest of the Chief (Ekkehard Schall), preening in a hall of mirrors and swanning about in a floor-length high-collared cloak, in many ways In the Dust of the Stars seems to aim for the groovy exuberant excess of Barbarella but fumbles with a prudish hesitance beneath its camp trappings of the moustachioed guard troop in thigh high boots, feeling less like a provocative science fiction epic of Marxist ideology than an absurdist children’s adventure film with occasional nipples.
Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA also includes The Silent Star (Der schweigende Stern), Signals – A Space Adventure (Signale – Ein Weltraumabenteuer), Eolomea, animated shorts The Robot and Janna and the Little Star, commentaries, archive interviews, newsreels and featurettes, a video essay and new interviews with science fiction scholar Mark Bould and Soviet cinema expert Claire Knight.
Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA is available on Blu-ray from Eureka now
