This is an extract of a Sci-fi film made back in 1920's Russia. Aelita was the queen of space who fell in love a man on earth after seeing him on her futuristic television.
The Frist Center's current The Power of Pictures exhibit dedicated to early Soviet photography is generating a lot of talk, but one aspect that deserves more recognition is the film series accompanying it, Titled Revolution & Realism, it's a survey of major films and filmmakers showing throughout the exhibit's run in the Frist's Upper-Level Galleries, supplemented by one-offs at other venues around town. Vanderbilt's Sarratt Cinema hosted one of these just last week, a free showing of Dziga Vertov's dizzying silent Man with a Movie Camera. The next is 7:30 Tuesday night at the same venue: the 1924 science-fiction fantasy Aelita: Queen of Mars, directed by Yakov Protazanov. Released three years before Fritz Lang's Metropolis, it's the tale of an engineer prompted by a mysterious wireless message to daydream an epic tale of class revolt on Mars led by the alluring Martian queen Aelita.
Though Aelita isn't as well known as Lang's film, which it may have influenced, it remains famous for the lavish sets and costumes designed by avant-garde artist Aleksandra Ekster, using the bold geometric shapes that distinguished Constructivism — a movement that influenced film montage as well as painting and design.
Co-sponsored by The Frist, The Belcoourt, Third Man Records and the Vanderbilt Department of German and Slavic Languages, the International Lens screening will be introduced by Vanderbilt's Mellon assistant professor of Russian Jason Strudler. The film is free and open to the public, though parking may be difficult with Spike Lee appearing across campus the same night at Langford Auditorium.
