Imagine an early Eighties Eastern European space-prog album high on sugary breakfast cereal, “Heavy Metal” magazine, Hanna-Barbera cartoons and 8-bit arcade games like Galaxian and Asteroids, and you have some idea of the otherworldly weirdness of the Romanian animated sci-fi film DELTA SPACE MISSION.  In the year 3084, a Modigliani-esque alien journalist with blue-green skin, Alma, boards a state-of-the-art spacecraft named Delta – whose highly advanced computer brain develops a mad teenage crush on her with disastrous results.  An incredibly strange and strangely beautiful work of galactic eye candy, DELTA SPACE MISSION defies all rules of perspective and logic, like M.C. Escher and Moebius teaming up on a Romanian Saturday morning cartoon.  Fueled by an addictive Perry-Kingsley like electronic synth score by Calin Ioachimescu, DELTA SPACE MISSION grooves along folding space and time, an early Eighties Euro disco perched on the edge of a Black Hole.  With its egg-shaped spaceships, giant floating triangles and anthropomorphic computer, the film also brings to mind Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Rene Laloux’s FANTASTIC PLANET and the work of the Strugatsky Brothers (STALKER).

 

directed by: Mircea Toia, Călin Cazan

starring: 

1984 / 70 min / 1.33:1 / Romanian Mono with English subtitles

 

Additional info:

• New 4K scan of DELTA SPACE MISSION from the original camera negative by the Romanian Film Archive and CNC – Romanian Film Centre, with digital restoration by Craig Rogers of Deaf Crocodile Films

• Region A Blu-ray

• New interview with DELTA SPACE MISSION co-director Călin Cazan (40 min., in English)

• Two newly restored episodes from the DELTA SPACE MISSION short film series: “Planeta Oceanelor / The Planet of the Oceans” (1980, 7 min.) and “Recuperare ratata / Failed Towing” (1981, 7 min.), both directed by Victor Antonescu

• New commentary track by Kat Ellinger, author, film critic and editor-in-chief for Diabolique magazine

• New booklet essay by comics artist, editor and publisher Stephen R. Bissette (Swamp Thing)

• Reversible cover artwork

• English SDH subtitles