Voyage through Space, Time and Utopian Modernism in Ikarie XB-1

This chapter focuses on the recently restored Czechoslovak space opera Ikarie XB-1 (1963), directed by Jindřich Polák, which is currently gaining well-deserved critical recognition. Framing Ikarie within the ideological milieu of post-Stalin Eastern Europe, but also within a larger context of utopian literature and space travel science-fiction film, the chapter examines its depiction of future ideal people, their perfected living environments and everyday objects, including dress. In the final part the chapter adopts Chris Marker's 'time travel' film La Jetée (with which Ikarie shared the Grand Prix award at the international science fiction festival in Trieste in 1963) as a lens through which to look at those less visible - but equally important - aspects of Ikarie XB-1 that reveal something about its figuration of time as a layered and slippery entity.