"Eolomea" is an 80-minute live action film from 1972, so it will have its 45th anniversary next year. The director is Herrmann Zschoche and he was among the most known East German filmmakers and he is still alive today in his early 80s. The writer who adapted the original work by Angel Vagenshtain was Willi Brückner. There are actually a handful GDR science-fiction films that have become more known than most of the other (non-war themed) films from that country and it was a bit of a popular genre fitting in with the time back then as it was the age when space was explored. The cast here is a colourful mixture of actors from all kinds of countries, such as the GDR, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union, maybe even more.This film is about a woman (Cox Habbema) examining the disappearance of several space ships and other mysterious developments surrounding space stations and astronauts. And in the center of it all, apparently knowing much more than he admits, is Prof. Oli Tal, played by Rolf Hoppe, one of the most known GDR actors and he is also still alive today way into his 80s. I thought his scenes with Habbema were probably the highlight of the film and really the only moments where I genuinely cared somewhat about the action and the characters. Most of the other supporting characters felt entirely bland and uninteresting to me sadly. Oh yeah, this is a color film which is not to be taken for granted for GDR films of the early 1970s. All in all, I give this one a thumbs-down, but I also may be a bit biased as I have never been too big on SciFi. Only worth checking out for huge lovers of this genre.

Communist East Germany. Great Filmmaking. Stellar technology and science fiction. Do these things seem to fit together in any conceivable way? No, they do not.Why the DVD production company has the nerve to even compare "Eolomea" with the likes of Tarkovsky's "Solaris" or "2001" is beyond me. At best, this "lost classic" is more like an Austin Powers / Benny Hill rendition of a serious space epic, with a Burt Bacharach soundtrack and plenty of lava lamp space imagery. Movies like this were what "Mystery Science Theater 3000" in the 1990s was made for.Others here have attempted to explain the storyline , which is so convoluted and fragmented throughout that there is not a shred of suspense or even empathy for the characters. Strangely enough, I still think this movie does have one important historical value: like a representation of Communism itself, it shows what at the time must have been wild scientific/philosophical idealism in its home country, but in hindsight is just robots made of ugly hunks of metal junk and astronauts with holes in their socks.

I recently discovered East German Sci-Fi, which didn't produce large numbers but a few very interesting films of that genre. One of these is Eolomea, rather good and in many ways cerebral film which requires all of viewer's attention. Story is carefully constructed and the sets aren't any worse then US films of that period such as "Silent Running,(not counting the "2001 Space Odyssey", of course, which is impressive even by today's standards). No, the sets and the effects are very decent, giving the budget and conditions of the production and if you compare it to big budget US flops such as "Marooned" it's on another level. Beautiful Dutch actress Cox Habbema is a real treat to watch, leading the international cast in which Ivan Andonov (a Bulgarian actor/director) and Vsevolod Sanayev, stand out. This is a first of three DEFA Sci-Fi Collection films, released by First Run Features, I had a chance to watch and it's pretty good.

Science fiction made in East Europe usually has different perspectives of life as Western science fiction. This is one example.Not about technology or the future of our society, not even about the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (that it claims to be about), but about humans, their character traits, and their quest for the final frontier.Accordingly the visual effects by Kurt Marks and Boris Trawkin, though awarded the Grand Prix of the UNIATEC, suffer in comparison with other fx-heavy movies made about the same time, like Academy Award-winning The Poseidon Adventure or Douglas Trumbull-directed Silent Running.Still it creates a future that could happen any time, showing technology only in outer-space, and the stations in space and on asteroids look pretty much like good old MIR, the Russian space-station.And yet it is rewarding for those who love the human desire for knowledge...This was the third science fiction movie of the legendary DEFA studio and the first one to be based on an original concept (by Bulgarian Angel Vagenstein), starring Dutch Cox Habbema, Ivan Andonov (a director in his native Bulgaria) and Russian actor Vsevolod Sanayev (who died January in 1996), and German actors Rolf Hoppe and Wolfgang Greese.