settima

StanisławLem

Test pilota Pirxa [Pilot Pirx's Inquest] (Marek Piestrak, 1979)

Apr

12

International Day of Human Space Flight

Test pilota Pirxa (1979)

Men and nonlinears to board the ship set for Saturn's Cassini Division. DP: Janusz Pawłowski.

A manned spaceship for the International Day of Human Space Flight

“He began thinking about the innocence of machines, about how man had endowed them with intelligence and, in doing so, had made them an accomplice of his mad adventures. About how the myth of the golem — the machine that rebelled against its creator — was a lie, a fiction invented by the guilty for the sake of self-exoneration.”

– Stanisław Lem, Opowieści o pilocie Pirxie (1968)

Commander Pirx is sent out on a secret mission to evaluate “nonlinears” – androids – to determine if they can be used for future space flights. In a blind test, androids and humans form a crew for Pirx to investigate and identify.

Śledztwo [The Investigation] (Marek Piestrak, 1974)

Oct

28

Śledztwo (1974)

A person offscreen shoots a handgun. DP: Edward Kłosiński.

Ikarie XB 1 [Icarus XB 1] (Jindřich Polák, 1963)

Jun

26

Ikarie XB 1 (1963)

An astronaut passing a perfectly symmetrical walkway, similar to the ones seen in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). DP: Jan Kališ.

Ikarie XB 1 [Icarus XB 1] (Jindřich Polák, 1963)

Jul

20

Space Exploration Day

Ikarie XB 1 (1963)

Two astronauts weightlessly pushing themselves through a round airlock. Their suits are eerily similar to the ones seen in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). DP: Jan Kališ.

Both anticapitalist and pre-Stanley space odyssey. Based on Stanislaw Lem's Obłok Magellana [The Magellanic Cloud] (1955).