Peter Pan, the kid who doesn't want to grow up, arrives

Aelita, The Queen Of Mars is a Socialist science fiction spectacle and in 1924 was the first big-budget movie from Soviet Russia. A year and a half in the making, it was intended as ideologically correct mass entertainment which could compete both in Russia and abroad with the Hollywood films that dominated Soviet and world screens while also earning plaudits for artistic innovation such as had greeted The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and other German expressionist films. Aelita is a fantastic adventure about Los, an engineer living in Moscow, who dreams of Aelita, the Queen of Mars, and builds a spaceship to take him to her. They fall in love, but Los soon finds himself embroiled in a proletarian uprising to establish a Martian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics! This story is based loosely upon a novella by Alexei Tolstoy, a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy, who had established a reputation for popular novels, poetry and drama before 1917 and who had just returned to Moscow after emigrating during the Revolution. The director, Yakov Protazanov, was a pre-Revolutionary Russian film giant who was persuaded to give up a successful new career in France and Germany to offer his skill and prestige to the untried Soviet film industry. The most interesting element in this film - the basis for its enduring fame - is its design: amazing Martian costumes and sets by the distinguished abstract painter Alexandra Exter and her accomplished prot-g-, Isaak Rabinovich. Informed by cubism and other design trends in France, Italy and Germany, they are executed in the distinctively Russian avant-garde style of the day, known as constructivism. Despite its long inaccessibility, Aelita has survived in excellent condition. This bizarre and haunting work has at last been restored to view in a first class edition with new English intertitles and a new piano score by Alexander Rannie based upon vintage themes by Sergei Prokofiev.

"On leaving the theatre one has the impression of having witnessed the birth of a new art." - Adolf Loos. Flicker Alley and Lobster Films are proud to present this groundbreaking landmark of artistic collaboration and avant-garde design, newly-restored with two original scores from Aidje Tafial and the Alloy Orchestra, in its North American Blu-ray premiere.. Released to intense controversy in 1924 for its cinematic and technical innovations, L'Inhumaine (The Inhuman Woman) is a visual tour-de-force; a fantastical, science-fiction melodrama; and a momentous collaboration of legendary figures from the avant-garde movement. Directed by Marcel L'Herbier (L'Argent, Feu Mathias Pascal) and starring the famous French opera singer Georgette Leblanc - who helped produce the film along with L'Herbier's company, Cinegraphic - L'Inhumaine is most notable for the style of filmmaking. In L'Herbier's words, it represents a "miscellany of modern art," bringing together some of the greatest artists from the time period, including painter Fernand Leger, architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, glassmaker Rene Lalique, fashion designer Paul Poiret, and directors Alberto Cavalcanti and Claude Autant-Lara, among others, to create a collaborative cinematic experience.. Leblanc plays the "Inhuman Woman" of the title, Claire Lescot, who lives on the outskirts of Paris, where she draws important men to her like moths to a flame. At her luxurious parties, she basks in the amorous attentions of her many admirers while always remaining aloof. When it appears she is the reason for a young devotee's suicide, however, her fans desert her. The filming of the concert where she's raucously booed is a renowned piece of cinema history: L'Herbier invited more than 2,000 people from the arts and fashionable society to attend the Theatre des Champs-Elysees and play the part of the unruly audience. Among the attendees were Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Erik Satie, Rene Clair, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound (although none are actually visible).. For this brand-new restoration, Lobster Films - with the support of Marie-Ange L'Herbier (the director's daughter), the French CNC, SACEM and Maison Hermes - utilized the original nitrate negative, scanned at a pristine 4K resolution, and restored the original tints for the first time since the film's release. The Blu-ray features two audacious new scores, one from percussionist Aidje Tafial and the other by the Alloy Orchestra. With optional English subtitles to the original French intertitles, Flicker Alley and Lobster Films are proud to present L'Inhumaine in an edition that does justice to the dazzling beauty of L'Herbier's landmark vision..