maika

Spadla z oblakov

The best children movie I’ve seen was from the former Czechoslovakia, “Maika – Cô bé từ trên trời rơi xuống“, which was based on a 1967 Czech children book. Here are the titles in various languages, mostly from countries under communism during the cold war:

• Slovak: Spadla z oblakov (original language)
• Russian: Приключения в каникулы
• German: Sie kam aus dem All
• English: She Came Out of the Blue Sky
• Polish: Majka z Kosmosu/Spadła z obłoków
• Norwegian (Nynorsk): Majka – jenta frå verdsrommet
• Vietnamese: Maika – Cô Bé Từ Trên Trời Rơi Xuống
• Hungarian: Csillagok küldötte
• Bulgarian: Паднала от облаците
• Spanish: Mayka, La Niña del Espacio

It’s about a little girl from outer space who visited a fictional town in Slovakia and befriended with a group of children in the city, and their relationships were beneficial for both sides.  Here’s Maika’s arrival and first human encouter, in Slovak:

Maika can fly,

maika flying

walk on walls,

maika walks on ceiling

see through things,

duplicate things:

maika duplicates rope

She has a belt that contains her energy and knowledge of the universe including astrophysics and mathematics:

maika's belt

It was definitely my dream belt growing up :-).  One of the coolest adventures they had was a ride in a rocket through the city,

Children can only dream of having such incredible friends and adventures.  For children growing up in Vietnam during the 80’s, maika was a fixture on black and white TV.  The series has 13 parts, each about 1/2 hour long.  That’s 13 nights for us.  Back then, movies were only shown Mon-Wed nights each week, so it took more than 1 month to finish.  Or may be not, because half of the time or more, we would miss episodes due to electricity cuts.  Of my years growing up, I must have seen the various stages of the series at least 10 times.

Here’s a clip of part 3, dubbed in German and Vietnamese. In this clip, the children decided to steal Karol (the tall boy)’s aunt’s clothes to dress Maika properly:

As in life, all good things come to an end at some point… Here’s Maika’s departure, dubbed in Russian:

Maika had mastered human emotion by this point and cried just before her departure.  I shed quite a few tears as well each time she departed.

Here’s a playlist of the entire series in Slovak.  (If you want the series dubbed in Vietnamese, they’re selling them in Little Saigon in Santa Ana, California, USA.)

Wonderful series, wonderful memories.