Nazim Tulyakhodzayev - Будет ласковый дождь / There Will Come Soft Rains (1984)

One of four "imaginal soundtracks" created by contemporary musicians for the 1984 Uzbek (then USSR) animation by Nozim To'laho'jayev  a/k/a Nazim Tulyakhodzayev

Release rationale:

"Phantom Limb's soundtrack imprint Geist im Kino continues with the launch of new series Imaginal Soundtracking, in which contemporary musicians are invited to re-score existing film pieces.

"Designed to reframe overlooked or forgotten works of cinema and to offer a new artistic challenge to the contributing musicians, Imaginal Soundtracking acts as a dialogue between the creative minds at play. The first release in the series, out digitally on June 19, sees a quartet of highly inventive, wildly varying takes on award-winning animation There Will Come Soft Rains, created in 1984 by Uzbek filmmaker Nazim Tulyakhodzayev. The film is based on a short story of the same name by Ray Bradbury, itself a reference to a 1918 work by US poet Sara Teasdale, which foretells the danger of mankind’s extinction by war, predating many such fears by some decades. Characteristic of Soviet filmmaking of the time, Tulyakhodzayev's adaptation is abstracted by layers of allegory and interpretive meaning, rendering it bizarre, sometimes lysergic, but nonetheless arrestingly powerful and hauntingly relevant today in its story...

"Watch the film and listen to acclaimed London based Japanese producer Masaaki Yoshida's (better known as Anchorsong) unique interpretation...  His lamenting, piano-led score highlights the futility and sadness of the story. A single, gentle, repeated pulse holds the tempo while soft chords respond to the film’s increasingly bleak imagery. He retains the robot’s voice from the original film, building his own composition around it."

The original film without imaginal soundtracks added.

Tulyakhodzayev made an adapation of another Ray Bradbury story, Veld, in 1987 - live action rather than animation. You can watch it here.

Vladimir Tarassov - Вперед, время! / Onwards, Time! (1977)

with English subtitles, in two parts

"From the 1970s until 1980s... Tarasov made many films that talked about space through humanity, asking such questions as what it is to be human and how to find a common language between people. The quote “Wake up, cosmonaut!” from his film “The Return” has seen wide use in many different forms. His other film, “Contact”, was so popular in fact that it’s music – Nino Rota’s “Godfather” melody – was used during disco nights in Leningrad in the 1980s: if a young man wanted to court a girl, he whistled that tune, and if she whistled it back, it meant yes.

“Contact” is still Tarasov’s calling card – the “yellow submarine”-esque psychedelic film about a humorous meeting with an extraterrestrial civilisation won many awards in 1979, including one during the XVIII festival of science fiction films in Trieste.

"Tarasov called science fiction his breath of fresh air, thanks to which he has been able to work more freely and boldly than in other genres, and he has called animation the esperanto of humanity. He has also highlighted Estonian animation, such as the works of Rein Raamat and Priit Pärn.

"According to Estonian sci-fi expert Jüri Kallas, Tarasov was one of the most prolific science fiction authors in soviet animation. “To this day his films “Contact” and “The Pass” are broadcast by the biggest Russian TV channels around twice a year. These days Tarasov mainly works as a professor in Russia, but also in Iran and India; in the latter country you could call him the founder of the local animation scene...'” 

- text borrowed from here