The Hymns of Muscovy is a trip to the eponymous planet, which is an upside-down space twin of the city of Moscow. Gliding along its surface, we look down at the sky and see historic architectural styles fly by—the exuberant Socialist Classicism, aka the Stalinist Empire, the laconic and brutalist Soviet Modernism, and the hodgepodge of their contemporary knock-offs and revivals.
A little girl is taken on a mind-bending tour of her distant future. An element of childhood whimsy is integral to balancing out the film’s dark absurdism, paving the way for its core theme: life is precious, and the sadness permeating our day-to-day is a reminder to cherish it.
The black-and-white science fiction film from 1902 has since become a canonical work. A Trip to the Moon was hugely popular upon its original release and used animation and visual effects that were very innovative at the time.
Yes, Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett also made a film once, archetypically titled Film. A man tries to escape the gaze of an all-seeing eye. The disorienting camerawork comes from Oscar winner Boris Kaufman, whose brothers Dziga Vertov and Mikhail Kaufman created the legendary self-reflective masterpiece Man With a Movie Camera (1929).
Sofia is panicky again. The Universe decides to contact her—an other-worldly dialogue. Jacqueline Lentzou’s short film is a planet symphony for Mars, where people dream awake and fight for love.
Set in a post-apocalyptic near-future, La Jetée tells the story of an unnamed man whose vivid childhood recollections make him the perfect guinea pig for an experiment in time travel. After a lengthy period of conditioning, he is sent back in time, where he falls in love with a woman whom he once saw on a pier.
