Studying up on the history of the Soviet space program is one of my research pleasures. Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge and The Soviet Space Race with Apollo are two massive books — in size and detail — by space historian Asif A. Siddiqi, and act as significant and essential contributors to my knowledge of a technologically and politically complicated space effort. It's quite possible I cannot be satiated on this subject.
("V'Ger needs the information.")
Used to good effect is Georgy Sviridov's brilliant orchestral piece, "Time, Forward!", originally composed for a film of the same name just four years earlier but already finding a life outside its original intent. (It rolls with driving steel works machinery rhythms similar in collectivist spirit to those of Alexander Mosolov's 1927 piece, "Iron Foundry".)
My Russian is non-existent, so I asked a Russian friend of mine to translate the screen chatter in basic terms: He said that nothing much is revealed; in particular, the voice-over is a "near-to-empty official story of the flight"; nothing to give anything away.
On Saturday I posted a piece on Yuri Gagarin, the first man to experience space flight, and yesterday I wrote about my memories of the near-disastrous Apollo 13 moon mission.
To keep on a astronautics/cosmonautics theme this week, embedded above is Four in the Cosmos, a fine if unrevealing 20-minute motion picture document from 1969 on the Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 orbital docking mission from January of that year. Thousands of 16mm copies (and more than a few 35mm 'blow-ups') would have been made of this 'promotional' short, for distribution to schools, libraries, and cinemas, large and small, across the USSR and its satellite states.
Used to good effect is Georgy Sviridov's brilliant orchestral piece, "Time, Forward!", originally composed for a film of the same name just four years earlier but already finding a life outside its original intent. (It rolls with driving steel works machinery rhythms similar in collectivist spirit to those of Alexander Mosolov's 1927 piece, "Iron Foundry".)
My Russian is non-existent, so I asked a Russian friend of mine to translate the screen chatter in basic terms: He said that nothing much is revealed; in particular, the voice-over is a "near-to-empty official story of the flight"; nothing to give anything away.
(Not advertised was Soyuz 5's bumpy return to Earth.)
As short-form filmmaking, Four in the Cosmos is effective and, at times, almost poetic.
As short-form filmmaking, Four in the Cosmos is effective and, at times, almost poetic.
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