Theme: Soviet Cinema

Soviet Cinema refers to the films made during the period of the Soviet Union was in existence between 1917 and its dissolution in 1991. Perhaps this topic should more accurately be called Communist or Eastern Bloc Cinema – it principally concerns films of the Soviet Union but we also discuss here works from East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia during the time they were under Soviet rule.

The Soviets put out a reasonable number of films that fall into genre material, mostly science-fiction, rarely horror but some that fall into fantasy. Soviet films were backed by state studios that could lavish much on production value and were not concerned, like Western films, with being able to recoup this at the box-office.

Soviet SF of the 1950s and 60s lacks the paranoid fear of imminent alien invasion and atomic monsters unleashed that is present in American SF films of the same era. Mostly it is a series of films about stolid and resolute engineers and scientists travelling to the stars and carrying the Communist ideal with them. Later developments include more sophisticated works like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979) and adaptations of writers like Stanislaw Lem and the Strugatski Brothers.

For Western fears and portrayals of the Soviet regime in genre material see Communism and the Cold War in Fantastic Cinema.