Mir

November 18, 2007 3:34 PM

in '97 or so I saw a documentary about the crew that was stranded aboard MIR when the big political change in Russia occurred around 1990. It was titled something like 'Man out of time,' may have been made by a Czech director, and had as its' central thesis the idea that the guy who was stuck up there while the Soviet Union became Russia was a time traveler. What the hell is the exact name of this flick?
posted by mwhybark to media & arts (6 comments total)

Is this it?
posted by loosemouth at 3:37 PM on November 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yes.

Wow, 3-minute service. That's space-age.
posted by mwhybark at 3:49 PM on November 18, 2007

Also, here's a bunch of clips.
posted by mwhybark at 3:51 PM on November 18, 2007

Along the same lines.
posted by jbroome at 4:06 PM on November 18, 2007

Amazon.com link
posted by flug at 6:25 PM on November 18, 2007

FWIW, the flick was very cool and worth watching. Not perfect, but the whole idea of someone making an intensely personal subjective documentary about a for-real space station is inherently amazing, and I have never been able to shake the zero-gee bachelor-apartment duct-tape-and-baling-wire genius of the interior shots of Mir. In my memory, at least, a cosmonaut kicks off an interior wall and has to bat away a guiter or balalaika or something. It got to the point that I was assiduously looking in the corners of the frame for an orbiting constellatioin of crushed beer cans or half-empty Stoly bottles.

More than anything, this film demonstrated to me that, yes, people can live in space, just as ordinary people, people who forget to do laundry and like to play guitar and so forth.

Subsequent events on Mir - oxygen-canister fires, supply ship collisions, multi-hour uncontrolled hi-gee cartwheeling - made it clear to me that there might be consequences to leaving your guitar untethered and your secret porn-and-amphetamine stash behind. But aren't there always such consequences?
posted by mwhybark at 9:37 PM on November 19, 2007