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To the Polish author Stanislaw Lem, creating science fiction was itself a form of time travel. “What the science-fiction work presents belongs to one time (most often the future), whereas how it tells its story belongs to another time, the present,” he once wrote. “Even if imagination succeeds in rendering plausible how it might be, it cannot break completely with the way of apprehending events that is peculiar to the here and now.”
对于波兰作家斯坦尼斯拉夫·莱姆(Stanislaw Lem)来说，创作科幻小说本身就是一种时空旅行。“科幻小说的工作就是呈现出属于某个时刻的东西（通常是未来），然而讲故事的方式却属于另一个时刻——那就是现在，”他曾经这样写道。“就算想象力成功地把另一个时空演绎得活灵活现，它也不可能完全脱离此时此地理解事物的独特方式。”
Inevitably, the “here and now” ages into “there and then,” and the distance between those two points can be more disorienting than any wild flight into the universe. That’s one of the thoughts that arises for a viewer of the unfamiliar titles in Strange Lands: International Sci-Fi, the Film Society of Lincoln Center series starting Friday that runs the gamut from space-age sex farce to dystopian nightmare and travels to such lost worlds as Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.
他口中的“此时此地”已经不可避免地流逝而去，成了“彼时彼地”，两个时空之间的距离或许比宇宙中的激战更加令人困惑。自周五开始（8月22日——译注），林肯中心电影协会推出“奇异之地：国际科幻电影展映”(Strange Lands: International Sci-Fi)，内容涵盖了太空时代的性闹剧到反乌托邦梦魇，也兼顾捷克斯洛伐克与苏联这些失落的世界，当观众看着那些陌生的片名时，关于“此时此地”与“彼时彼地”的思考便会涌上心头。
These Cold War rarities do more than serve as kitschy time capsules, they represent traditions of sci-fi filmmaking as storied, if not as well budgeted, as Hollywood’s.
这些“冷战”期间的罕见影片不仅是刻奇的时光胶囊，它们就算不像好莱坞电影一样由大笔资金制作，但也同样著名，代表了科幻电影的传统。
The series wanders throughout Europe, but is tellingly weighted toward the former Soviet bloc. With its bent toward theoretical worlds and systems, the genre lent itself extremely well to expressions of socialist utopia, especially after the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first person to orbit Earth, fueled dreams of a Communist galaxy. Such tales often involved assorted comrades banding together to solve interplanetary conundrums, invariably sacrificing self for the sake of society and the universe. In East Germany, the state-run studio DEFA produced seven movies in this mode, two of which appear in the series.
这个展映系列贯穿整个欧洲，但显著偏重前苏联地区的电影。科幻类型的电影倾向于展现理论中的世界和体系，因此特别适合表现社会主义乌托邦。俄国宇航员尤里·加加林(Yuri Gagarin)进入太空绕地球一周后，更是促进了苏联对于共产主义银河系的梦想。这样的故事通常是讲述各种各样的同志们联合在一起，去解决星际间的各种问题，为了全社会，为了全宇宙，免不了要有自我牺牲。东德的国营电影制片厂DEFA制作了七部这种类型的电影，其中两部会在这个影展系列中放映。
In one, “Eolomea” (1972), a slew of rocket ships goes missing outside an international space station, prompting the leggy scientist Maria Scholl (Cox Habbema) to investigate with the aid of a onetime paramour, the wiseacre navigator Daniel Lagny (Ivan Andonov). With a space-lounge soundtrack, Ms. Habbema’s killer mod attire (like a turtlenecked pantsuit and a skimpy yellow bikini), and Mr. Andonov’s insouciant charisma, the film is very much of its post-’60s moment, or at least aspires to be. The real conflict winds up having little to do with missing spaceships, but instead requires Lagny to choose between scientific progress and the nostalgic pull of earthier concerns. The rogue is tamed for the common good in the end, but his wistfulness hints that even behind the Iron Curtain, space dreams had become as defined by David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” as by the Gagarin triumph.
其一是1972年的《厄洛米亚》(Eolomea)，片中有许多太空船在某国际空间站外失踪了，有着一双美腿的科学家玛利亚·修尔（Maria Scholl，考克斯·哈比玛[Cox Habbema]饰）在自以为无所不知的领航员丹尼尔·拉尼（Daniel Lagny，伊万·安多诺夫[Ivan Andonov]饰）帮助下进行调查，两人曾经有过一段情缘。哈比玛穿着杀手般的太空衣（有点像高领连裤套装和暴露的黄色比基尼的结合），安多诺夫则有着无忧无虑的魅力，这部片子还有太空风格的电子乐配乐，很像后60年代风格，至少是努力达到这样的效果。最后冲突真正的解决和那些消失的太空船没什么关系，但是需要拉尼在科学发展与对地球怀旧式的顾虑之间做出选择。最后这个无赖的家伙顺从了普遍利益，但是他的惆怅暗示着，就算在铁幕的那一边，对太空的梦想一方面由加加林的胜利所塑造，另一方面也受到大卫·鲍伊(David Bowie)的《太空怪人》(Space Oddity)影响。
Four years later, DEFA produced even groovier and loonier entertainment. Like an extended, very special episode of “Star Trek,” “In the Dust of the Stars” (1976) follows the spaceship Cynro as it responds to a distress signal from the planet TEM 4. Except there’s no evidence of trouble; in fact, TEM 4 is a land of endless partying, with citizens go-go dancing to swanky wah-wah funk and getting high from aerosol breath fresheners. But it soon becomes apparent that the partyers are actually colonizers, and that the native people have been exiled underground and enslaved.
四年后，DEFA制作了更精彩、更疯狂的片子。1976年的《在星尘之中》(In the Dust of the Stars)就像是《星际迷航》(Star Trek)的延伸，像是它的特集。影片跟随太空船辛诺号，它应答着TEM 4行星上发出的悲伤信号。而在TEM 4上却没有任何麻烦的迹象，那里上演着无穷尽的派对，人们伴着时髦的放克乐跳摇摆舞，空气里的喷雾清新剂让人飘飘欲仙。但是，影片很快就表明，这些开派对的人其实是殖民者，本地人被流放到地底，遭受奴役。
While there’s little nuance to the film’s anti-imperialist, anti-American allegory (the most prominent slave is even outfitted in Native American garb), it offers a more sophisticated dilemma, which is still relevant: whether to arm the TEM 4 insurgency — and commit to an extended and deadly embroilment on foreign turf.
虽然这部影片也是反帝国主义和反美寓言（最显眼的一个奴隶甚至穿着美洲土著人的服饰），它也带来了一个更复杂的困境，到如今仍然有意义：是否要武装TEM 4行星上的起义者，是否要在外星势力范围上掀起扩大的，致命的动乱。
Shoddily ambitious, exhilaratingly awkward and truly bonkers, “In the Dust of the Stars” seemed to aim for a certain cultural moment but instead landed fascinatingly far afield.
《在星尘之中》有着恶劣的野心、欢快的笨拙和真实的疯狂，似乎是旨在捕捉一个特定的文化时刻，但却奇异地落在了遥远的地方。
Mr. Lem, who was the most influential sci-fi writer in Europe during the era (and who’s represented in the series by Edward Zebrowski’s relatively realistic adaptation of his first novel, “Hospital of the Transfiguration”), wrote of how the horrors of the 20th century defined all approaches to the genre. “In the postwar years, there seemed to be only this choice, between hope and despair, between a historically untenable optimism and a well-justified skepticism that was easily apt to turn into nihilism,” he said.
莱姆是当时欧洲最有影响力的科幻作家（在这个影展里有爱德华·赞布罗斯基[Edward Zebrowski]根据他的第一部小说《变脸医院》[Hospital of the Transfiguration]改编的电影，风格比较现实主义），他曾写过，20世纪的种种恐怖是如何影响了科幻小说的方方面面。“在‘二战’之后的岁月里，似乎只有这一种选择，不是希望就是绝望，不是从历史角度而言根本站不住脚的乐观主义，就是有理有据，很容易就变成虚无主义的怀疑主义，”他说。
Emerging from Czechoslovakia in 1967, Jan Schmidt’s “The End of August at the Hotel Ozone” veers definitively toward nihilism.
1967年，简·施密特(Jan Schmidt)在捷克斯洛伐克推出的《没有男人的八月末》(The End of August at the Hotel Ozone)无疑倾向于虚无主义。
In that film, decades after a devastating nuclear holocaust, a small band of women roams the landscape looking for food and kicks. A fierce matriarch is the only one who remembers the old world, and the only one with any sense of morality, but she’s got dwindling sway over the anarchic marauders, who shoot a dog and behead a snake for sport. So bleak is the outlook that hope (an old man, who may be the last on Earth) and grace (a gramophone that plays only “Beer Barrel Polka”) are introduced just so they can be summarily squashed.
在影片中，摧毁一切的核灾难已经过去十几年了，一小群女人在山野漫游，寻找食物和刺激。一位凶猛的女族长是唯一一个还记得旧世界的人，也是唯一一个有道德意识的人，但她渐渐开始支配一群无政府主义掠夺者们，她们开枪打死一只狗，砍掉一条蛇的头，只是为了寻开心。所以画面非常黯淡，片中出现希望（一个老年男人，或许是地球上的最后一个男人）和优雅（一个留声机，只会放《啤酒桶波尔卡》这一首曲子）的迹象，只是为了被简单地摧毁。
Gorgeously shot and devastatingly well told, the film echoes the hopelessness of certain World War II narratives of the era (“Ivan’s Childhood,” “Diamonds of the Night”) while damningly projecting it onto the future. State authorities balked at the film’s bleak outlook, delaying its release, and nearly half a century later its apocalyptic imagery still has the power to shock.
这部影片有着精彩的摄像和令人震惊的叙事，和《伊万的童年》(Ivan’s Childhood)、《夜之钻》(Diamonds of the Night)等同时期“二战”叙事影片中的绝望相呼应，与此同时又充满谴责地将这种叙事投射到未来。国家当局害怕电影中惨淡的景象，延迟了它的发行，过了几乎半个世纪，它那末日天启版的想象力仍然令人震撼。
As for Mother Russia, the series includes two wildly different films from the glasnost era that nevertheless both find fantastical visions not in the future or in faraway lands, but in an infinitely warped present.
至于“俄罗斯母亲”，这个影展中也收录了两部风格非常不同的影片，来自戈尔巴乔夫的“公开化”(glasnost)时代，两部影片都有幻想的成分，它们不是发生在未来或是遥远的国度，而是发生在一个被扭曲的当代。
In the cheeky epic “Kin-dza-dza!” (1986), a Muscovite goes out to buy macaroni only to find himself accidentally teleported, alongside a bewildered Georgian student, to a distant desert land. They’re helped and hindered along the way by a pair of scheming, talentless buskers who fly about in a rickety old capsule and speak a language that’s dominated by the catchall word “koo.”
在顽皮的史诗片《外星奇遇》（Kin-dza-dza!，1986年上映）中，一个莫斯科人外出去买意大利面，却被意外地进行了心灵传送，和一个困惑的格鲁吉亚学生一起被送到遥远的沙漠。一路上，一对狡猾而又无能的卖艺人坐着一个破破烂烂的胶囊状物体飞行，有时帮助他们，有时阻挠他们，他们的语言主要是一个含义甚广的词——koo。
The stunted, deceptively nonsensical narrative evokes Samuel Beckett, while the bric-a-brac visuals borrow heavily from Terry Gilliam’s pop surrealism. But the sense of giddy pointlessness is Russian to the core. The film’s ultimate joke is that when given the opportunity to return to normal Soviet life, the two men keep choosing to dither in this absurd purgatory.
这种迟缓、带有迷惑性的胡言乱语让人想起萨缪尔·贝克特(Samuel Beckett)，而片中的小古董画面又大量借鉴了特里·吉列姆(Terry Gilliam)的波普超现实主义。但是那种轻佻的无意义感则是彻底的俄罗斯风格。影片的终极玩笑是：两人虽然得到机会可以重返现实的苏联，他们还是选择在这个荒诞的炼狱里彷徨。
In “Days of Eclipse” (1988), meanwhile, an early feature from the visionary director Alexander Sokurov (“Russian Ark”), there’s little to distinguish between what’s real and imagined, past and present, wished for and feared. An adaptation of the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s celebrated novel “Definitely Maybe,” the film never establishes what would normally pass for a science-fiction conceit, instead charting the wearied mind of Malyanov (the improbably beautiful Aleksei Ananishnov), a young doctor working in a sweltering Central Asian village.
1988年的《日蚀的日子》是亚历山大·索科洛夫(Alexander Sokurov)的早期作品，这位富于幻想的导演的代表作是《俄罗斯方舟》(Russian Ark)。在《日蚀的日子》里，真实与想象、过去与现在、希望与恐惧之间很难区分。影片是根据阿尔卡季(Arkady)和鲍里斯·斯特鲁加茨基(Boris Strugatsky)兄弟的著名小说《确实也许》(Definitely Maybe)改编，影片的故事没有设定为科幻电影的典型概念，而是记录了疲惫的马亚诺夫(Malyanov)，一个在闷热的中亚村庄工作的年轻医生的故事，这个角色由美得惊人的阿里克赛·安纳尼斯诺夫(Aleksei Ananishnov)饰演。
Mr. Sokurov shoots the film through an alien’s eyes, pondering the strangeness of a lobster, a lizard, a little boy and a talking corpse, all while indiscriminately toggling between color and sepia-tone black and white, ground-level and overhead shots. He’s not just making something fantastical of the real world, he’s also disorienting our very perception of it through the tools of filmmaking.
索科洛夫通过一个外国人的视角拍摄这部电影，思索着一只龙虾、一只蜥蜴，一个小男孩与一具会说话的僵尸有多么怪异，与此同时随意地在彩色与墨色调的黑白之间切换，在与地面齐平的拍摄角度和与头顶齐平的拍摄角度之间切换。他并不只是让现实生活中的东西变得奇异，也通过电影工具扭曲了我们对现实世界的感知。
“In the early days of film, the celluloid medium was itself science fiction,” Sonja Fritzsche writes in the forthcoming book “The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film.” She is referring to the work of silent cinema artists like Georges Méliès and Fritz Lang. With “Days of Eclipse,” Mr. Sokurov tapped into that formative past to reaccess a way into the future — a way that’s still infinitely, exhilaratingly strange.
“在电影艺术早期，电影胶片这种媒介本身就是科幻的，”索尼娅·弗里切(Sonja Fritzsche)在即将出版的新书《世界科幻电影的利物浦同伴》(The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film)中写道。她指的是乔治·梅里埃(Georges Méliès)和弗里茨·朗(Fritz Lang)等默片明星。在《日蚀的日子》里，索洛科夫利用具有重大影响的过去，重新发现一条进入未来的道路——这条道路至今无穷无尽，充满令人兴奋的奇异。
