1924 Soviet Animated Propaganda Film Interplanetary Revolution Now Streaming

Zenon Komissarenko, Youry Merkulov, and Nikolai Khodataev created the 1924 Soviet animated propaganda film Interplanetary Revolution, which is now available to watch online. The film employs a mix of traditional cel animation, collage, and stop-motion, producing a disorienting effect compared to the work of outsider artist Henry Darger. Its narrative, announced by an intertitle, follows Comrade Coninternov, a Red Army soldier who travels to Mars and defeats all the planet's capitalists. The movie opens with a wild-eyed, ax-wielding bulldog in a top hat representing a capitalist. Other capitalists, marked with swastikas on their foreheads, drain blood from a proletarian. By the early 1920s, Germany's nationalist right had adopted the swastika, and Soviet propagandists used it to label capitalists as fascists. After the revolution, a pantless capitalist demon goes insane upon eating a copy of Pravda. The capitalists then escape on a giant flying shoe into space. The film has been added to Open Culture's Free Animated Films list, part of its collection of over 4,000 free movies online. An earlier version of this post appeared on the site in 2015.