Offscreen Film Festival

There’s a lovely story that the original Tron film was excluded from the special effects Oscar race in 1983 because using computers was considered “cheating” by the Motion Picture Academy.

It's hard to believe now, but there was a time when big-screen science fiction was all about little models of spaceships and massive stage sets - both of which tended to wobble at inappropriate moments.

This year, Brussels' Offscreen Film Festival proposes a journey back to this imperfect era, with a programme of pre-computer films about space travel. The Hollywood contingent needs neither introduction nor apology for the lack of computerised effects. Alien, Silent Running and 2001: A Space Odyssey remain classics for the genre, while older offerings such as This Island Earth and Forbidden Planet can draw on a reserve of kitsch that has embedded them in the cultural memory. David Lynch's Dune falls somewhere between the two, being by turns madly over the top and positively visionary.

But the programme boldly goes beyond the classic end of the sci-fi repertoire. There are Italian films, such as Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires, considered by some an inspiration for Alien, and the Star Wars rip-off Starcrash, in which the future is low-cut and figure- hugging.

Further out still are films from behind the Iron Curtain. Once again there are some classics, such as Andrei Tarkovsky's metaphysical Solaris and the essential silent film Aelita. But this is mostly unknown territory, from the socialist realist Planet of Storms (1962), with its heroic scientific mission to Venus, to the grandiose allegory of Polish film On the Silver Globe (1988) and the Czech New Wave style of Ikarie Xb1 (1963).

If you don't care that much for the future, Offscreen still has plenty of other treats. Face/Off is a small but specialist programme that brings together films involving people with changed faces. These include the 1966 conspiracy thriller Seconds, the poetic horror of Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without A Face, 1960), the 1947 film noir Dark Passage (pictured) and the existential Japanese film The Face of Another (1966).

The guest of honour at the festival is American director Monte Hellman, who will present a new print of his best-known film, Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) on 19 February. This tale of two hot-rod racers who pick up a hitchhiker and set off across America has become a classic of the road movie genre.

Hellman is still working at 78, and the festival will show his latest film, Road to Nowhere. There is also a chance to catch two unconventional westerns he made with Jack Nicholson, Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting.

Also on the programme is a selection of 1970s and 1980s kung-fu movies from the Shaw Brothers Studios in Hong Kong, and some new feature films that are unlikely to make it onto regular screens. These include Phil Mulloy's dark animation Goodbye Mister Christie and Simon Rumley's slacker revenge movie Red, White and Blue.