The Adventures of Elektronik: Soviet Sci-Fi with a Human Face
Going down the rabbit hole.
The other day, I decided to take a peek at the most famous children’s film of my childhood. When I was a kid, whenever this film was shown on TV, every girl in my building stopped whatever she were doing, and we all went to the apartment of that one girl whose parents had a color TV. And then the entire crowd sat in front of the screen, mesmerized.
The film (The Adventures of Elektronik) is about two boys: a human boy and his twin, a robot. The Soviet film makers have managed to turn a robot tale into a kind philosophical story about free will, the meaning of life, and what it means to be human (and how any attempt to “outsource” one’s life to machines backfires).
I ended up rewatching the entire film in one sitting. Some parts of it feel very strange to me today, after spending my entire adult life in the West. But it brought back the camaraderie, the purity of friendships, and the overall randomness of life.
I hope you like it. The film consists of three episodes, and I found the version that has English subtitles.
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Elektronik was one of the films of our summer holiday.
A few scenes were filmed in
Vilnius, I think Electronik's school and the spiral car park were filmed there.
Good memories.
Wow. Somebody else besides me enjoys strange and/or Russian science fiction.