Esperanto film

Feature films

There are four feature films known to have been shot exclusively in the constructed language Esperanto. Both "Angoroj" ("Agonies") and "Incubus" were shot in the 1960s, and both were long thought lost until recent restorations. Two more Esperanto films have been produced recently.

The first was the French production "Angoroj" 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.

"Gerda malaperis!" ("Gerda Disappeared!") and "La patro" ("The Father") are two new films that have been produced by the Brazilian Esperanto film producer Imagu-filmoj.

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 to 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.

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 on the walls are written in both English and Esperanto (for example, the corridor on each level is labelled "Level/Nivelo [###] ", and a sign in a movie theatre says "Cinema/Kinejo") - but this only lasted for the first two series, when a redesign of the sets eliminated the Esperanto. Only one episode of the show (Series 2 episode 1, "Kryten") actually features a significant amount of Esperanto being spoken: in which the character of Rimmer is attempting to learn Esperanto from an instructional video and failing miserably (although his underachieving bunkmate Lister can understand it perfectly).
*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 Shadaloo, 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 The movie "" 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 " [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395121/ 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.

External links

*es icon [http://www.delbarrio.eu/cine.htm Films in Esperanto]
* [http://www.imagu.com.br/ Gerda malaperis, la filmo]