Space Tourists

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Movie
German title Space Tourists
Original title Space Tourists
Space Tourists movie poster.jpg
Country of production Switzerland
original language Russian , English , Romanian
Publishing year 2009
length 98 minutes
Rod
Director Christian Frei
production Christian Frei
music Edward Artemyev ,
Jan Garbarek ,
Steve Reich
camera Peter Indergand
cut Christian Frei
occupation

Space Tourists is a cinema documentary by the Swiss director Christian Frei . It accompanies space tourists in their preparations for space and shows scrap collectors in the Kazakh steppe in search of high-quality rocket stages. The film premiered at the Zurich Film Festival 2009 and won the “World Cinema Directing Award” at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival .

content

The film accompanies the first female space tourist, the American-Iranian dual citizen Anousheh Ansari , as she prepares for the flight into space. The trip cost her $ 20 million. Ansari himself had recorded videos in space, which can be seen in the film and tell of the almost unspectacular everyday life in weightlessness on the International Space Station. The film contrasts the world of this extremely wealthy space tourist with that of rocket scrap collectors who wait under dangerous conditions in the Kazakh steppe for the rocket steps to fall from the sky after takeoff. These are made of the highest quality, but also toxic, materials and can be resold. Magnum photographer Jonas Bendiksen also has a say, who has been portraying these scrap collectors on the edge of the former Soviet Union for years. The film humorously illuminates the topic of space tourism from different angles, for example it observes Charles Simonyi , main developer of Word and Excel , doing space training and tasting food suitable for space. And he accompanies the Romanian space enthusiast Dumitru Popescu, who takes part in the Google Lunar X-Prize competition , which was announced by the X-Prize Foundation . This foundation, in turn, was set up by Anousheh Ansari. With breathtaking images, the film not only offers an insight into modern space travel, but is also a poetic declaration of love for the earth.

Reviews

“Christian Frei is allowed to get closer to the spacemen than anyone before him. The Swiss documentary filmmaker manages never-before-seen recordings. An impressive collage in poetic images full of space and beauty. "

- Bettina Fraschke - HNA Online

“So curious in detail, so serious is Christian Frei's film in general. With Space Tourists he uses a concrete example to show the ambivalences and contradictions of a global world with super-rich space tourists on the one hand and poor Kazakh farmers on the other, who ruin their health by handling highly toxic contaminated space junk. "

- Herbert Spaich - Filmspaicher

“Space Tourists shows the new phenomenon of space tourism not as mere science fiction, but as a sign of our time. Its protagonists couldn't be more different. But as with his portrait of the war photographer James Nachtwey in the Oscar-nominated documentary War Photographer (CH 2001), Christian Frei succeeds in creating a differentiated picture of all the main actors. "

- Nicola Ruffo - Yearbook Cinema

"Discreetly and without any ostensible moral judgment, Christian Frei succeeds in this masterfully assembled documentary film in spectacular images of the consequences of an unleashed belief in technology and never losing sight of the basic virtue of cinema for a moment: to entertain."

- Geri Krebs - film portal 451 °

Awards

literature

  • Walt R. Vian: "To direct means to anticipate documentary films and to prepare the cameraman". Conversation with Christian Frei about Space Tourists. In: Filmbulletin, Kino in Augenhöhe, Vol. 51, No. 6.09 (2009), pp. 33–39 ( online )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Film review Schäferhütte from rocket scrap from July 30, 2010
  2. ^ Film review SWR-Kino-Blog from July 27, 2010
  3. ^ Film review yearbook Cinema from October 15, 2009
  4. ↑ Film review film portal 451 °