u/bcirce

Watching Star City got me interested in the Soviet perspective of the Space Race. I watched these movies, and decided to make a poster series to bring these hidden gems to life as a series. I included the year they take place so watch them in order if you can.

Taming of the Fire (1972)
Filmed during the cold war as a propaganda film, recounts the life of Sergi Korolev from college through the first satellite and first human in space. They definitely had some real launch site access when filming this, pretty amazing shots. But kinda slow, I could probably have cut 40 minutes and not missed anything. Interesting nonetheless.

Gagarin: First in Space (2013)
Biography of Yuri Gagarin. I really wanted to like this film. It's fine, but, its really slow and even boring in some places. It actually reminded me of First Man (2018) which was also a slow biopic.

The Spacewalker (2017)
This movie is about the first human spacewalk, and is really great. They overcame a lot of challenges and they all play out on film. Major Apollo 13 vibes throughout. The movie has a compressed timeline compared to how long some things really took, but really enjoyable.

Salyut-7 (2017)
The Soviets lose contact with their space station, and send cosmonauts to investigate. Also based on a true story, but this one is highly sensationalized. Interesting and fun, but a bit over the top.

PS Taming of the Fire is available on YouTube at 720HD. Enjoy.

I tried to include the date, its a little hard to read the year but this is a pretty great series from the soviet point of view, especially if you watch in chronological order. You can get at TPDB