Esperanto film
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[edit] 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 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 also associated with the Esperanto Cabaret in Paris.
The second feature was the 1965 American production Incubus, a low-budget black-and-white horror film directed by the creator of the television series The Outer Limits and starring William Shatner. Though the film is admired for its stark artistry, Esperantists generally cringe at the actors' poor pronunciation.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Use of Esperanto in film and television
- 1931 The Esperanto novel Mr Tot Aĉetas Mil Okulojn, written by Polish author Jean Forge, 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 Road to Singapore, starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, features a song with Esperanto lyrics sung by a chorus of natives of Kaigoon, a fictional island in the East Indies.
- 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 bilingual 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. In general, the series is not complimentary of Esperanto — the main use of the language is as a device to spoof a character who appears unable to master the language (though the character took Esperanto in school because it is supposed to be easy to learn).
- 1985 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.
- 1987 horror film by Serbian director Goran Marković titled Već viđeno apparently includes both Esperanto and Serbo-Croatian dialogue.
- 1994 Street Fighter street signs and labels 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 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 In the Korean amateur animation named Esperanto - which received a prize in the Digital Content Grand Prix - one can hear some sentences in Esperanto.
- 2005 A short film named Esperanto was released, with scenes in French and Esperanto.
- 2006 Casarosa is 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 the 1920s. In some scenes people speak and sing in Esperanto, or discuss it in Russian.
[edit] External links
- (Spanish) Films in Esperanto
- Gerda malaperis, la filmo
