Companies : St Petersburg Documentary Film Studio, Harun Farocki Filmproduktion, Bremer Institute Film Fernsehen, La Sept ARTE, RTBF Bruxelles, WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) (Cologne)
Out of the Present (Germany/Russia, 1995) tells the story of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who spent ten months aboard the space station Mir, while on earth, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
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Proudly proclaiming itself to be «the first film made in outer space,» Andrei Ujica's movie is ostensibly a documentary about the space mission undertaken by Sergei Krikalev. As well as being a showcase of breath-taking photography and amusing anecdotal footage, the film reflects on the contrast between political revolution and man's natural state. When Sergei Krikalev waved goodbye to his family, he could scarcely have imagined how much would have changed by the time he next saw them. His launch to take him on a mission to the space station Mir took place on 18 May 1991 from the Soviet Union.
When he returned to Earth on 25 March 1992, the country no longer existed. His experience of the changes, narrated by his colleague Anatoli Artsebarski, differ somewhat from those on the ground. The cosmonauts engage themselves with their work, which often seems to be on the level of mundane household tasks in a messy bachelor pad. Despite the impediment of zero gravity, life continues as normal: the crew cut each other's hair, light candles at Christmas and perform routine repairs, such as hacksawing pipes. Wires, gadgets and ducts lie everywhere and computer parts seem to have been assembled haphazardly. The space station is a surprising mixture of rough and ready technology and the plainly domestic.