MOSCOW (AFP) - A Moscow court met on Friday in a case brought by the daughters of legendary cosmonaut Yury Gagarin against the makers of a film touching on racial issues in Russia, officials said.

The court postponed hearing the case brought by Yelena and Galina Gagarina, daughters of the first man in space, until next Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Babushkinsky district court, Nadezhda Sokolova, told AFP.

The daughters are suing Moscow-based film company Central Partnership, distributor of the tragi-comic feature film "Gagarin's Grandson," for allegedly misusing Gagarin's name and misrepresenting his life, the company said.

The film portrays a black boy named Gennady Gagarin who claims untruthfully to be the grandson of Gagarin and a Cameroonian woman. The film makes clear that the boy's surname in fact derives merely from his birthplace, a village named in Gagarin's honour.

A secretary for elder daughter Yelena Gagarina, who is director of the Moscow Kremlin museum complex, told AFP that Gagarina would not comment until the case was over.

But Central Partnership's chief executive, Sergei Shestakov, said the case was effectively an attempt at censorship and could set a dangerous precedent for the industry.

"This is not a documentary but an artistic work," Shestakov told AFP.

He noted that the film includes archive material showing the real travels that Gagarin made to Africa after his 1961 flight, when he was feted both in the Soviet Union and abroad.