Aelita
“In the aftermath of the Civil War, and with new solvency achieved through NEP economic experiments, the Soviet film industry was prepared, in 1924, to undertake a production that would rival the foreign films that were arriving in Moscow in the '20s. The film artists collective, Russ, decided to film Alexei Tolstoy's story of three Russians - an engineer, a Red Army soldier, and a detective - who fly to Mars and become involved in a revolutionary uprising among the Martian people: while there, one of them - the engineer - has a love affair with Aelita, Queen of Mars. To direct this monumental story, Russ induced the most experienced director of the pre-Revolutionary period - Yakov Protazanov - to return from exile in Paris.... The art direction is the most famous attribute of Aelita: the sets and costumes reveal in the fantastic Martian landscape a cubist design that resulted from Protazanov's experience in the French art world as well as from the direct participation of artists from the Russian constructivist movement.”