UK PREMIERE
First on the Moon (Pervye na Lune)

Maltings cinema
Saturday 22 21.00

Russia, 2005, 75 min
Black & white and colour, DigiBeta
Russian, Spanish, with English subtitles
Sugg. cert. 15

dir: Aleksei Fedorchenko scr: Aleksandr Gonorovskiy, Ramil Yamaleyev
prod: Dmitri Vorobyov
dop: Anatoli Lesnikov
editor: Lyudmila Zalozheva
music: Sergey Sidelnikov
cast: Boris Vlasov, Viktoria Ilyinskaya, Viktor Kotov, Andrei Osipov,
Igor Sannikov

production company: Sverdlovsk Film Studio
international sales: Seagull Films

Director’s profile:
Originally an economics graduate, Alexei Fedorchenko later trained in screenwriting at the Russian Institute of Cinematography in Moscow after joining the documentary arm of Sverdlovsk Studios. He has spent several years working on documentaries: his first short, David (the story of a Jew who survived the Nazi concentration camps and gulags) was followed by Sons of the White Tomb (Deti beloj mogily), a documentary on the survival of an ethnic minority forced into exile in Kazakhstan during the Stalinist era. First on the Moon is his first feature; amongst the many awards the film has garnered, it was named best documentary at the 2006 Venice Film Festival.

The film kicks off with a recent enquiry linking debris found in the north of Chile to a Russian space vessel. Having raided the recently released files of the NKVD (precursor of the KGB) in search of further evidence, the filmmakers uncover the truth behind the first moon landing – which took place more than twenty years before Gagarin orbited the earth. They manage to track down Ivan Kharlamov, the vessel’s pilot and sole surviving member of this hushed mission (who was seized by the authorities soon after his return from space) and unearth hidden surveillance videos showing the selection and training of these pioneer cosmonauts.

First on the Moon is an ingenious documentary that seamlessly splices real archive footage with a meticulously recreated, fictionalised account of a secretive Russian space programme. It delves into the mechanics of the Soviet state – from its painstakingly manufactured heroes (which it often subsequently destroyed) to its propagandist cinema – to reveal a heady mix of utopia and paranoia, a climate of fear and suspicion characteristic of the Stalinist era. Part historical drama, part fantasy, it provides an illuminating counterpoint to the 1929 satirical comedy My Grandmother, another Russian film screening at this year’s Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, which was banned by the regime for more than four decades.