Frau in Mond (Woman in the Moon, 1929) by Fritz Lang has been recently restored and re-issued on DVD and Blu-ray by Eureka! This new version is quite interesting since it is accompanied by the documentary "The First Scientific Science-Fiction Film", directed by Gabriele Jacobi and explaining the making of the film.
Lang was inspired by the 1923 book The Rocket into Interplanetary Space by Hermann Oberth (also the film's scientific adviser) that tackled the problems of early space travel.
The adventurous story follows the vicissitudes of Helius, a German entrepreneur, who decides to embark on a journey to the moon to fulfil the dreams of the elderly scientist Professor Manfeldt. Helius leaves with rival Windegger, Friede, the woman both men love, Manfeldt and blackmailer Turner, though during their journey they discover a surprising stowaway on the ship, a young boy obsessed with sci-fi comics. Once they land, the crew will discover that surviving is much more important than discovering the gold Manfeldt claims can be found on the moon, while a dramatic choice awaits them towards the end of the film.
Taken from the eponymous novel by Lang's wife Thea von Harbou, Woman in the Moon is a mix of scientific discovery, melodrama and sci-fi fiction.
The film re-release seems well-timed with what's happening in the news and I'm referring not just to the recent achievements of the Rosetta mission.
The Soyuz spacecraft, launched from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan yesterday, landed indeed on the International Space Station this morning, delivering Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and her crewmates Russian Soyuz commander Anton Shkaplerov and NASA astronaut Terry Virts to the weightless research centre where they will live and work for five months.
Cristoforetti is flying as an ESA astronaut for Italy's ASI space agency under a special agreement between ASI and NASA. Her mission is named "Futura" to highlight the science and technology research she will run in weightlessness to help shape our future. In her mission she will also be using the POP3D Portable On-Board Printer, Europe's very first 3D printer in space.
While in Cristoforetti's case we should be talking about "woman on a space station", rather than about "woman in the moon", both her mission and Friede's (in the film) seem to have the same aims. Friede is a symbolical "Eve on the moon", a sort of hope in a future destiny; Cristoforetti's mission is about research, discovery, science, technology and exploration,but also about adventures and dreams of the future (besides female astronauts embarked on a mission seem to be the perfect answer to the rather embarrassing sexist and terribly inappropriate shirt - surely a case of "call the fashion space police" View this photo - donned by the Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor during a European Space Agency live stream...).
You can keep updated with Cristoforetti's mission online by visiting this site, reading the mission blog Outpost 42 or following her on Twitter @astro_samantha. Hopefully, in the next few months, she will inspire us to look at space, technology, women and - why not - also art, fiction, cinema and fashion, from a scientific and intriguing point of view.
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