Mircea Toia, Călin Cazan - Misiunea Spatiala Delta / Delta Space Mission (1984)

 

"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)."

- Vinegar Syndrome

Currently showing on the Criterion channel (but not for long?), this is a really quite stylish and graphically inventive sci-fi animation.

And while the main theme is campy 'n 'quaint (to the point of sounding a bit like something cooked up by Look Around You), the rest of the incidental music and underscores by Calin Ioachimescu are excellent. 

(There was actually another film score for the movie made by Rodion Rosca but then the job was given to Ioachimescu.) 

Something I learned indirectly from watching this film:  we noticed that the language of the dialogue didn't sound Slavic but more like Italian (I heard a word that sounded a lot like "arrivederci") and looking into it, discovered that Romanian, as the name actually suggests, is a Romance language. Despite being surrounded on all sides by Slavic tongues, the language Romanian most resembles is in fact Italian. 

Also learned: the term "Balkan sprachbund"

I used to be rather intrigued by Romania as a child, partly because of Transylvania and the legend of Vlad the Impaler (did a school project on him, with the gory bits written in red ink). But also (being into wildlife then) by the fact that the country is relatively unspoiled - large parts of it consist of "undisturbed forest". Many many species of flora and fauna, and a high proportion of the surviving bears in Europe. Also wolves. I used to dream of taking one of those Black Sea cruises advertised in colour supplements and the Radio Times in the 1970s and stopping off in Romania with my binoculars. 

We were also big fans in our house of Ilie Năstase, with the dashing long hair and the daring playing style. 

Then there is E.M. Cioran. 

And Creel Pone has put out a bunch of cool records by Romanian electronic composers, including an album including work by Calin Ioachimescu

Here's another Mircea Toia + Călin Cazan sci-fi/ space-fantasy animation