Les mutants du cinéma.

Alterity is questioned within three Russian films which are about genetic mutation and the coming of a new era for Humanity: Tarkovsky's Stalker, Lopuchanski's The Ugly Swans and Iufit's Bipedalism. Stalker defends the idea that a spiritual renewal is necessary to save the world through a mutant girl possessing paranormal capacities. The Ugly Swans adds that mutation should not be considered as pathological, and thus must be accepted with trust in its spiritual power. Nevertheless, Bipedalism recalls that attempts to create a new human being, made in the 1920's-1930's in the USSR, have proved to lead to dead ends and human disasters. The comparison between those three films leads to a temporal point of view about alterity which challenges the more conventional spatial conception of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]