> g-niale 4.
international short film festival stralsund

15 august 02 -- St.Jakobi -- 21:30
> Steven Garling plays "The wild Planet" (1973, La Planète sauvage)


Director: Rene Laloux
Book: Roland Topor, Rene Laloux (based on the novel "The Savage Planet"by Stefan Wul)
Graphic design: Roland Topor
Drawings: Joseph Kabrt (Figures), Joseph Vania (Backgrounds)

The Oms have self-destructed on their planet Terra and are now in a Stone-Age state on the planet Yon. The domesticated Oms live in the Park, the wild (outlaw) Oms live beyond the walls in the forest. The status quo is quickly established in the opening sequence, where a giant blue finger flicks an Om woman and her baby down the slope like a bug. The woman is killed and her baby is later discovered by two strolling Drogs, Tiva and her father, a member of the Drog ruling cabal. Like the Pharaoh's daughter finding and adopting the infant Moses, Tiva takes the baby home and inadvertently educates it during her subliminal Info lessons.
It's a world of continual irony, based upon a reversal of fortune as elementary as that in Planet of the Apes, but in this instance showing human development in polar opposites: where we have come from (the wild Oms) and where we expect to evolve (the mystical Drogs). The human experience is expressed in both master and slave, thus the expected historical progression of revolt, war and political settlement occurs.
While there are many amazing scenes and graphic whimsies along the way, the climax on the Fantastic Planet itself is the most interesting. Escaping "Omization" (gas extermination), two Om rocketships make it to the satellite that orbits Yon and find giant headless torsos standing like the forgotten effigies of a lost civilization on a Daliesque plain. This is the "Fantastic Planet", a conjunction for Drogs everywhere in their galaxy, a place for mating and reproduction. Drog youth navigate to this rutting field of the demi-gods in glass spheres that float like spore bubbles and attach themselves to the shoulders of a statue of the appropriate gender. The statues then begin to dance in pairs, a ritual that allows these astral beings the necessary physicality for reproduction and the continuation of their species.
In danger of being crushed, the two Om ships open fire with their ray guns and wipe out the mating couples... causing a parallel chaos back on Yon, where the Drog elders are in telepathic contact. Faced with disaster, they immediately open negotiations with the Oms and peace follows, based upon a New Order: an artificial satellite (state) called Terra (in honour of their ancestral planet) is launched and henceforth both cultures are free to progress in harmony but with independent spiritual sky-cults.
http://www.coastnet.com/~lwr/Fcourt/FanPlan.htm

The percussionist Steven Garling will open this year’s film festival with a concert to a science fiction film of the 70ies. He will use the topic of 2002 to silence a sound film in order to produce a live soundtrack. He will invite Steven Binetti – voc, guit & Lexa Schäfer – bass.
http://www.steven-garling.de