Surrealist Manifesto on monoskop.org
Dziga Vertov
Kino-pravda no. 21 - Leninskaia Kino-pravda. Kinopoema o Lenine
Worker from Lenin factory tells of the assassination attempt on Lenin. Memorial at the scene of the attempt. Gun with which Lenin was wounded. Lenin after the attempt. Scenes from the Civil War, map of 1919, Lenin's speeches from the time of the Civil War. Red Army detachments marching. Soldiers taking an oath. Lenin's speeches. Komintern session, Lenin's speech. Demonstrations in Central Asia, veiled women march, scenes of unveiling in front of the camera. Children marching. Soldiers, mass demonstrations, tractors ploughing the soil. Machines working. 1921, crisis, hunger, epidemics, Lenin's speeches. New Economic Policy, a fair in Nizhnii Novgorod. Machines in factories and in the fields. 1922-23, news about Lenin's health: temperature, pulse, breathing - presented with the help of animation. Announcement of Lenin's death on January 21, 1924. Lenin in the coffin, masses of people coming to the House of the Soviets for a farewell ceremony. Krupskaia, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Kalinin, Rykov, Iaroslavskii, and other politicians around the coffin. Klara Zetkin, Carl Radek. Dzerzhinskii, Frunze, Stalin, Voroshilov, Budennyi. Orchestra, a group of soldiers, pioneers passing by the coffin. Crowds on the streets. Cartoon image of a capitalist happy about Lenin's death and crying at the sight of the growing number of Communist Party members. Street scenes, people waiting in line to enter the House of the Soviets. Workers who entered the party in 1924. Meeting at a factory, new party members are accepted. Delegates of 13th Party Congress go to the mausoleum on Red Square. Pioneers on Red Square. Village scenes: young pioneers distribute Lenin's portraits among village kids. Meeting of peasants and workers, who speak about the union of village and city.
The first Soviet science-fiction film has its roots in Russia’s rich tradition of sci-fi literature: Yakov Protazanov’s Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924) was adapted from a play written by Alexei Tolstoy, a popular writer of historical and science-fiction novels. In post-revolution Moscow, a daydreaming radio engineer receives a mysterious radio message, prompting him to fantasise about building a spaceship and travelling to a totalitarian Martian empire, where he leads a revolution of the enslaved proletariat.
One of the first films about space travel (albeit in its protagonist’s imagination), Aelita is memorable for its elaborate depiction of Mars in the constructivist style, with distinctive sets and costumes by designer Alexandra Exter. It was an influence on Fritz Lang’s subsequent Metropolis (1927) and Woman in the Moon (Frau im Mond, 1929), but more importantly it begins an enduring theme within Soviet sci-fi of using space films as a vehicle for communist ideology.
(from "Red skies: Soviet science fiction, BFI http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49760)
While it is most widely remembered for being the first Russian science fiction film, Aelita is perhaps more interesting today as a document of the tumultuous period following the implementation of Lenin’s New Economic Program (NEP) and as an example of the popular Soviet cinema of the 1920s. The NEP, introduced in early 1921, ushered in a brief period of relative economic and social liberalism, which allowed for high-profile film productions like Aelita, and provoked both Bolshevik outrage and pre-revolutionary nostalgia.
It also gave rise to a class of NEPmen who took advantage of official positions within the Soviet hierarchy to bribe and steal their way into secret fortunes. Early on in Aelita’s narrative we are introduced to NEPman Victor Erlich (Pavel Pol), who uses his connections with the housing authority to requisition a room in the house Los shares with his wife Natasha (Valentina Kuindzhi). In one of the film’s most memorable sequences, Natasha accompanies Erlich to a secret high-society ball. The attendees arrive bundled up in hats, scarves, and long, drab coats, but once they enter the hall they gleefully cast them off to reveal chic 1920s hairdos and elegant evening clothes.
Set against the elegant European-style ball scene, and the abstract Martian settings, the film’s documentary-style footage of contemporary Moscow is surprising and instructive. In one sequence, Los wanders through streets lined by waist-high piles of blowing snow. After Natasha’s checkpoint closes, she takes a job managing an orphanage, where we are privy to rows of infants tied into straight-backed chairs.
While Aelita does uphold basic Soviet values, it seems ultimately to privilege the more moderate goal of reconstruction – both national and romantic – over the dream of universal revolution. In this way, whether valorised or vilified, Aelita stands as a revealing embodiment of the aspiration and uncertainty that characterised Soviet life in the early 1920s.
(from Senses of Cinema http://sensesofcinema.com/2010/cteq/aelita-queen-of-mars/ )