Bruce Loeb on Piano Preceded by short: Interplanetary Revolution(Mezhplanetnaya revolutsiya). (E. Komissarenko, Y. Merkulov, N.Khodatayev, USSR, 1924). In this delightful cartoon satire on Aelita, aRed warrior from the Komsomol carries on the fight against thebourgeoisie in outer space. Photographed by V. Alexeyev. (11 mins)The New Babylon represents a culmination of the experimentalworkshop FEKS (Factory of the Eccentric Actor), organized by twoself-styled "engineers of the spectacle," Grigori Kozintsevand Leonid Trauberg. FEKS sought a distinctively modern idiom in thestill infant art of cinema. The story of The New Babylon is set in the1871 Paris Commune and centers around a posh department store modeledafter that found in Emile Zola's novel Au bonheur des dames, which inturn satirized the circus of consumer fetishism represented by the Parisemporium Le Bon Marché. The extroverted acting style that FEKSdeveloped pushed away feelings in a kind of pre-Brechtian carnival ofalienation; caricature replaced character. But the inspiration for thephotography came from the impressionists, and there are some magnificentscenes shot in fog, shadow, and moonlight, while the choreography ofshots approaches that of ballet. Bruce Loeb's accompaniment is inspired by works of the period, including the original Shostakovichscore.