Aelita: Queen of Mars

An out-of-this-world scene from the 1924 Russian science-fiction film Aelita: Queen of Mars, which the NFSA digitally restored in 2018.  

It's a crucial moment: the Russian engineer Los (Nikolai Tseretelli) introduces Aelita (Yuliya Solntseva) to the human art of kissing, with dramatic results. The constructivist sets are seen in all their eerie glory. And if the Queen’s costume seems a little gimcrack (are those actual pipe-cleaners?), it’s still possible to speculate about the design’s aesthetic influence on Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis. 

Released only a few years after the Russian Revolution, Aelita centres on an uprising of the planet’s oppressed workers, who are trapped underground. Perhaps surprisingly for the day, its release was accompanied by a frivolous viral campaign – mysterious messages planted in newspapers, claiming to be transcriptions of a radio signal from space.