Seen by over 20 mil­lion Rus­sians when it came out in 1965, The Hyper­boloid of Engi­neer Garin was a film based on a 1927 nov­el by Alek­sey Niko­layevich Tol­stoy, who is not to be con­fused with his famous rel­a­tive Leo Tol­stoy. This Tol­stoy is gen­er­al­ly thought of as the father of Russ­ian sci­ence fic­tion, and The Garin Death Ray was one of his most famous books (Vladimir Nabokov con­sid­ered it his best).

Hyper­boloid was writ­ten and direct­ed by Alek­san­dr Gintzburg, a high­ly gift­ed cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er who nev­er quite reached the career heights his tal­ent might have war­rant­ed, in part because of his Jew­ish ori­gins, and in part because of the nar­row range of artis­tic free­dom allowed direc­tors work­ing for the State-run cin­e­ma. Gintzburg stayed well with­in that range for this film, which leaves us with an odd­ly com­pelling mix of Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da and 60’s pop-sci­fi.

As for the plot… we’d rather not give any­thing away. Just think of it as a beau­ti­ful­ly-lit pro­to-1984, with sub­ti­tles and laser beams, star­ring Big Broth­er as the good guy.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

A year before the Wright broth­ers launched the first air­plane flight in 1903, Georges Méliès, a French film­mak­er with already 400 films to his cred­it, direct­ed a film that visu­al­ized a much big­ger human ambi­tion – land­ing a space­craft on the moon. Loose­ly based on works by Jules Vernes (From the Earth to the Moon) and H. G. Wells (The First Men in the Moon), A Trip to the Moon (Le voy­age dans la lune) invent­ed one of our favorite cin­e­mat­ic gen­res – the sci­ence fic­tion film. Today, many film crit­ics con­sid­er Méliès’ short film an endur­ing clas­sic. The Vil­lage Voice ranked it #84 on its list of the 100 Best Films of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, and you’ll almost cer­tain­ly rec­og­nize the icon­ic shot at the 4:44 mark.

Méliès’s body of work, which goes well beyond this land­mark film, has been recent­ly col­lect­ed into a new box set. Georges Méliès: First Wiz­ard of Cin­e­ma (1896–1913) puts 173 rare and redis­cov­ered films onto a 5 disc, 13-hour col­lec­tion.

A Trip to the Moon has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. You can also down­load a ver­sion at the Inter­net Archive.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Hor­ror Film, George Méliès’ The Haunt­ed Cas­tle(1896)

Watch After the Ball, the 1897 “Adult” Film by Pio­neer­ing Direc­tor Georges Méliès (Almost NSFW)

Watch the First Russ­ian Sci­ence Fic­tion Film, Aeli­ta: Queen of Mars (1924)

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown, a doc­u­men­tary from 2008, is avail­able online. Named the Best Doc­u­men­tary at the 2008 Com­ic-Con Inter­na­tion­al Inde­pen­dent Film Fes­ti­val, the film revis­its the life and writ­ings of H.P. Love­craft, the father of mod­ern hor­ror fic­tion. And it fea­tures impor­tant con­tem­po­rary artists (from film­mak­ers John Car­pen­ter and Guiller­mo Del Toro, to writ­ers along the lines of Neil Gaiman), all talk­ing about Love­craft’s influ­ence on their dark fan­ta­sy tra­di­tion.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!