settima

astronomy

Planeta krawiec [The Planet ‘Tailor’] (Jerzy Domaradzki, 1983)

June

7

National Tailors Day

Planeta krawiec (1983)

Lobby card. A fraction of the night sky with, where you would expect the Moon, a large button. DP: Stanisław Szymański.

During the tense hours of a solar #eclipse, the locals spend their time in a bar. One litre of vodka is the wager for he who can correctly guess a woman's dress size. Of course, tailor Józef Romanek (Kazimierz Kaczor) doesn't need to guess and that one litre later, finds himself walking through space. When he comes round from his coma, Józef builds an observatory in his house, where the tailor with his home-made telescope dreams of finding an unknown planet, and discovers the world around him.

 

Polish tailor Adam Giedrys is not only the subject of Planeta krawiec, but also served as the film's consultant. For his passion for and devotion to astronomy, Giedrys was the first Pole to receive Lunar soil from #NASA's 1969 Apollo 11 Moon mission.

Аэлита [Aelita / Aelita: Queen of Mars] (Yakov Protazanov, 1924)

Apr

29

International Astronomy Day

Аэлита (1924)

Queen Aelita (Yuliya Solntseva) peering through her telescope. DPs: Emil Schünemann & Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky.

Like in Enrico Novelli's Un matrimonio interplanetario [A Marriage in the Moon] (1910), interplanetary romance blooms in Аэлита.
Through her #telescope, Queen Aelita spots engineer Los, a handsome Earth man, and he promptly travels to #Mars to be with her. There, Los uncovers an uprising by the Elders against his beloved queen that he vows to – in good proletarian fashion – stomp down.

 

Aelita*'s constructivist stage and costume design had an enormous influence on science fiction, as far as the late 20th century.