Esperanto film
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Feature films
There are two feature films known to have been shot exclusively in the constructed language Esperanto. Both were shot in the 1960s, and both were long thought lost until recent restorations.
The first was the French production Angoroj (Agonies) in 1964, directed by Atelier Mahé. It runs approximately one hour, just shy of feature length, and its story involves murder. After a restoration and home video release (in the PAL format) in Switzerland, the film appears to be once again unavailable. Very little detailed information about Angoroj is available, except that the cast included some proficient Esperantists, including Raymond Schwartz, who was associated with the Esperanto Cabaret in Paris.
The second feature was the 1965 American production Incubus, a low-budget horror film directed by the creator of the television series The Outer Limits. Admired for its stark artistry, Esperantists generally cringe at the actors' poor pronunciation.
Documentaries
Earlier examples of Esperanto in film consist mainly of old newsreel and documentary footage, some dating back as early as 1911, when the seventh international Esperanto conference was held in Antwerp, Belgium. The funeral of Esperanto creator L. L. Zamenhof in 1917 was filmed. And according some sources, French cinema pioneer Leon Ernest Gaumont wanted to make a film about Esperanto to showcase a sync sound process he had developed, but the project was curtailed by the onset of World War I.
Animation
- 2005: Pre-production is nearing completion of an adaptation of the children's story La Junaj Trezorserĉantoj 1968 by James H. Sullivan. The amateur film studio will be using stop-frame animation techniques to make a short film, which is hoped to be aired on the Internet Esperanto TV channel Internacia Televido.
Use of Esperanto in film and television
- 1931 The Esperanto novel Mr Tot Aĉetas Mil Okulojn, written by Polish author Jean Forge (realname Jean Fethke), was adapted by Fritz Lang as The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse in 1960. (The film was in German, not Esperanto.) Forge also directed films of his own, at least two of which are known to have been Esperanto productions, Morgaŭ Ni Komencos la Vivon (1934) and Verda Stelo Super Varsovio (1959). It is unknown if either film survives.
- 1940 The Great Dictator starring Charlie Chaplin, who also wrote and directed the film, deliberately decided to have the signs in the shop windows, of the ghettoized Jewish population, written in Esperanto, instead of German, in order to leave the comparison of Nazi Germany to the audience.
- 1980s The British science fiction comedy Red Dwarf (which first began in 1988), is set on a bi-lingual spaceship where the signs in the corridors are written in both English and Esperanto, and the characters occasionally use the language to highlight this fact. However, in a set redesign for the third series, the Esperanto was all removed as it was not popular with viewers. Only one episode of the show contains a significant amount of Esperanto, that being the first episode of series two, "Kryton", in which one of the main characters is attempting (poorly) to learn Esperanto from videos.
- 1987 horror film by Serbian director Goran Markovic titled Vec vidjeno apparently includes both Esperanto and Serbo-Croatian dialogue.
- 1994 Street Fighter Street signs and label are in Esperanto; also background speech and even the anthem of Shadoloo, sung in the movie, are in Esperanto
- 1997 Esperanto also makes an appearance in Andrew Niccol's critically admired science fiction drama Gattaca, where announcements are read in Esperanto and English.
- 2004 Similarly, the movie Blade: Trinity takes place in a generic city which writer/director David Goyer nevertheless wanted to represent as bilingual (as many cities are worldwide), so the second language spoken in this nameless city, and visible on most of its signage, is Esperanto.
- 2004 In the Spanish film El Coche de Pedales , one of the main characters is a teacher of Esperanto. There are some scenes in which he greets people with "Saluton" or "Dankon", and a scene of one of his lectures, in which he reads a tale in Esperanto.
- 2004 Night on the Galactic Railroad, a Japanese anime film (based on the novel by Kenji Miyazawa), all the signs are written in Esperanto, to reflect the distinct but unspecific European ambiance of the town and also as a tribute to Miyazawa's interest in the language.
- 2006 Casarosa, a film by the First Channel of Russian television. The three-part film is a detective story about events taking place in an Esperanto club in 1920s. In some scenes people speak Esperanto, sing in it or discuss it in Russian.
External links
- Films in Esperanto (in Spanish).eo:Esperanto-filmo