Eureka Entertainment has announced Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA, a new boxset of four groundbreaking sci-fi films from East Germany.
Heading to Blu-ray from May 19th as part of The Masters of Cinema Series, the Limited edition boxed set features The Silent Star, Signals: A Space Adventure, Eolomea and In the Dust of the Stars.
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The movies hail from DEFA, East Germany’s state-owned film studio which operated from 1946 until its dissolution in 1992 and produced hundreds of feature films in a diverse range of genres including some colourful and wildly imaginative science fiction films during the 1960s and 1970s.
Based on Stanisław Lem’s The Astronauts, The Silent Star begins as an extraterrestrial object is unearthed in the Gobi desert. When it is found to have originated on Venus, the crew of the spacecraft Kosmoskrator is dispatched to the yellow planet to solve its mysteries.
In Signals: A Space Adventure, the Laika and its crew are sent to find a lost research vessel, the Ikaros. But as they draw nearer to the missing craft, they begin to intercept a series of strange radio transmissions.
Eolomea sees eight ships dispatched from the space station Margot disappear without trace – and it’s down to science officer Maria Scholl (Cox Habbema) to find out what happened to them.
Finally, In the Dust of the Stars follows the crew of the Cyrano as they land on the planet TEM 4 to investigate a distress signal – and find themselves under the psychedelic influence of its bizarre inhabitants.
Special Features:
- Limited Edition of 2000 copies
- Limited edition hardbound slipcase featuring new artwork by Carly A-F
- Reversible inner sleeve artwork featuring new designs for each film by Carly A-F
- Limited edition 60-page collector’s book featuring an introduction by Mariana Ivanova, Academic Director of the DEFA Film Library, and new writing by DEFA historians Sebastian Heiduschke, Sonja Fritzsche and Evan Torner
- All four films presented in 1080p HD from restorations by the DEFA Foundation
- Signals: A Space Adventure presented from a new 6K scan of the original 70mm camera negative
- Eolomea presented from a 4K scan of the original 70mm camera negative
- The Silent Star and In the Dust of the Stars presented from 2K scans of the original 35mm camera negatives
- The Robot (Klaus Georgi, 1968) – animated short produced by the DEFA Studio for Animation Film Jana and the Little Star (Christl Wiemer, 1971) – animated short produced by the DEFA Studio for Animation Film
- Love 2002 (Joachim Hellwig, 1972) – documentary short on the future of love in East Germany produced by the DEFA Studio for Newsreels and Documentary Films
- Optional English subtitles on all features and shorts, newly revised for this release
- New audio commentaries on all four features by Jim Morton, founder of the East German Cinema Blog
- Blast Off – new interview with science fiction scholar Mark Bould
- Red Skies – new interview with Soviet cinema expert Claire Knight
- Exploring the Cosmos – new video essay by science fiction expert Paweł Frelik
- British Filmmaker Visits DEFA (1959) – archival newsreel documenting Anthony Asquith’s visit to the set of The Silent Star
- A Rocket in the Soviet Zone (1959) – archival newsreel covering the making of The Silent Star
- Cosmonaut Dreams – archival featurette on the making of Eolomea, featuring special-effects cameraman Kurt Marks, costume designer Barbara Müller-Braumann and technician Jan-Peter Schmarje
- Dusting Off After 30 Years – archival interview with Peter Suring, director of photography on In the Dust of the Stars
- Original theatrical trailers