Tuesday | November 30, 2004 7:00 pm

Aelita: Queen of Mars

Live Piano Accompaniment by Martin Marks
Screening on Film

Directed by Yakov Protazanov.
With Julia Sointseva, Nikolai Batalov, Igor Ilinsky.
USSR, 1924, 35mm, black & white, silent, 82 min.
Russian language version.

An example of early Soviet science fiction, this film is an eccentric comedy based on Alexei Tolstoy's story about an inventor who shoots his wife and flees to Mars. The futurist design gracing this film decisively influenced many subsequent designers and illustrators of science fiction stories, especially the design of Mongo in Flash Gordon (1936).