HEAVEN SHIP - World Premiere of Restored Danish Silent Film!

Recently restored by filmmaker Jay Woelfel with special permission of the Danish Film Institute, the silent film HEAVEN SHIP (aka TRIP TO MARS) is the first film to be named a Space Opera, and arguably the first Science Fiction feature ever produced. Made in the midst of the horrors of WW I it offered hope of salvation from the unlikeliest of places. Join us!

About this event:

HEAVEN SHIP / HIMMELSKIBET (1917, 72 min.) was produced in Denmark which was a major center of film production in the silent era and was directed by Forest Holger-Madsen. Georges Méliès had introduced science fiction elements to silent film audiences but it took the creative directors of Nordisk film to create the first ever feature length film that reviewers at the time called A Space Opera.

A crew lead by a very Captain Kirk-like Commander Avanti raises private capital and an all-volunteer international male crew to travel to Mars because he needs to go boldly in search of discovery. After a long voyage, and near mutiny, the spacemen find on Mars, in contrast to earth, a seemingly naïve, almost technology-free peaceful society and yet the Martians are revealed to be superior and possibly the key to survival for earth in the form of the daughter of the Martian Spiritual leader.

Many of the clichés of the genre begin here in a serious, yet at times satirical, space- ship adventure film. Beautifully photographed featuring some of the first aerial photography audiences would have seen, the film has the classically Operatic, or perhaps William Shatneresque, acting style of the time. However the theme of an alien superior race possibly being able to save us screwed-up Earthlings was something that wouldn’t be done so overtly until THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL decades later.

The film is also a reaction to the unprecedented horrors of the first World War and was made in neutral Denmark during that time. Fervent Christian Religious faith is portrayed, yet the Martian Religion/philosophy is presented as a rival or even superior choice. The story borrows from classic Greek mythology, to be a Jason and the Argonauts meets “Star Trek” mission-to- seek-out-new-life epic.

The film’s director Holger Madsen, who would go on to co-direct a film with Carl Dreyer, and Olen Olsen, co-screenwriter and creative executive, are largely the auteurs of this ambitious and still topical film about space exploration. The villain of the film is a rival scientist, named Professor Dubious, who thinks space travel is foolish and a waste of resources better spent on earth.

The Danish Film institute granted LA based filmmaker and composer Jay Woelfel rights to score the film in an orchestral style, do sound design and also to fill out some areas suggested but not realized in the original script, and color treat the Intertitles and other scenes and to finish restoration work they had begun. This is the world premiere of Woelfel’s work on this unjustly obscure landmark Science Fiction film, and could be compared to composer Giorgio Moroder’s acclaimed version of METROPOLIS.

A fascinating alternative history/future film that’s fast moving, sincere, at times scientifically accurate and at times comically wrong, it deals well with themes and potential dangers most future science fiction, literature and films still deal with.

The Danish Film Institute says: “We are beyond impressed with what Jay Woelfel has done and how much his version and his music expands and reveals elements of Heaven ship in a new way!”

Join us for the world premiere of HEAVEN SHIP: A Trip to Mars (Presented with English Intertitles.)

Film Music Bio:

Jay Woelfel has spent his career working in all phases of production and post production. He has directed 14 feature films, won the first interactive academy award for his Titanic Documentary narrated by Patrick Stewart, edited Bronx Cheers which was nominated for an Academy Award for best short, won an Emmy for his film of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birthmark, and was included by The Ohio State University in its permanent exhibit “Buckeye Brilliance” among other distinguished graduates in the Student Union. Jay has scored 59 films and won awards for 19 of these for best music score. Music came first as Jay played the Baritone horn in concert bands from the 4th grade on. Film music attracted him to films for their orchestral but often experimental and modern scores. He took console organ lessons for 3 years in high school and began scoring his own, and other people’s film in film School.

HEAVEN SHIP is the second silent film he has scored, having previously scored and won best score for the 1928 silent version of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. In addition he did scores for ISLAND OF LOST SOULS and THE OLD DARK HOUSE, neither of which had an original score previously, he won best feature score at the Austin Science Fiction Film Festival for both.

Ticket price: $10 (in-person event only)

Please email [email protected] or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.

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Host or Publisher The Philosophical Research Society