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In the race to beat NASA, an actress and a director will fly a month to the International Space Station, where they will film “The Challenge. “
By Andrew E. Kramer
MOSCOW – The first satellite in space, the first dog, the first man, the first woman and now, if all goes according to plan, the first movie.
Russia came close on Thursday to claiming the record in the area when a commission of medical and security experts approved a plan for an actress and a director to take off early next month to shoot the first fiction feature film in the area.
The film, titled “The Challenge,” tells the story of a doctor briefly introduced to the International Space Station to save the life of a cosmonaut. If filmed on time next month, it would put Hollywood into a low-Earth orbit.
NASA last year announced Tom Cruise’s plans to film on the station, and then Russian agency Roscosmos announced its cinematic ambition.
At a press convention in Moscow before departing for the launch, the Russian actress, the director and her stuntmen (either role has backing, so that a last-minute physical challenge derails the assignment) spoke enthusiastically about a new frontier in the screen business. they hoped to paint weightlessness like never before in fiction and, thanks to the skills of a professional actress, the feeling of floating freely and seeing the Earth from the heavens.
“For the first two seconds, it’s scary,” Yulia Peresild, who is on her way to placing the first actress in space, said of her education on an airplane flight that shortly created a microgravity environment. “After that, it’s beautiful. “
Ms. Peresild and Klim Shipenko, the director of the main crew, plan to hop on and back in a Soyuz capsule and spend 10 days filming in the Russian segment of the area station. It’s unclear when NASA plans to release its area film project. , however, Russian officials were concerned enough to replace the project’s timeline to accommodate the couple’s hasty release.
Takeoff is scheduled for Oct. 5. Thursday’s approval through a commission from the Yuri Gagarin Center for Cosmonaut Training removed a significant hurdle for the film. Like the character she will play, Mrs. Peresild, who is 37, pushed herself through an education that began this spring after an audition. She does not delight in the area or aviation.
The daughter of a painter and a kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Peresild had already achieved fame in Russia. He has starred in blockbusters, art and television series and has starred for years at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre in Moscow.
Russia’s plan to send an actress to the area follows a series of flights through non-professionals this year, adding those of Amazon owner Jeff Bezos on a rocket built through his company Blue Origin, and 4 passengers in a capsule made through Elon Musk. corporate, which he presented on Wednesday.
For the Russian film, Anton Shkaplerov, an experienced cosmonaut, will pilot the three-seater Soyuz spacecraft. All project members were trained for in-flight emergencies with Russian equipment for accident-prone areas, in the capsule or in the Russian segment of the aircraft. Station, which lost air and earlier this year made a backward turn in orbit after thrusters from a new failed Russian module.
“I’m not afraid,” Ms. Peresild said of her spaceflight, she also said that “fear is normal. “
Peresild admitted that she would face limitations in filming in space, for example, she will wear makeup herself and paintings without sound equipment.
Shipenko said his purpose was to bring the fun of the area to life through the eyes of a user, the medical character played by Ms. Peresild. “We need each and every user to be a little bit like our hero,” he said. , experiencing through its functionality the feeling of an adventure in the area. Three cosmonauts will play small roles.
Filming long scenes of an actress in weightlessness will be a novelty for cinematography, said Anton Dolin, film critic and editor-in-chief of Film Art, a film critic magazine. But after a film claimed the name of the first film in space, he said, and the novelty fades away, it’s unclear whether long-term projects would “justify the prices and risks. “
Astronauts and cosmonauts, of course, have been filming documentaries for decades. The Apollo lunar missions were the first to broadcast live television broadcasts.
Modest and past attempts have been made to film fiction in the area, said Robert Pearlman, editor-in-chief of CollectSpace. com, a news story about the area’s history. Richard Garriott, an entrepreneur who flew as a tourist in 2008, filmed a seven-minute short film called “Apogee of Fear,” with astronauts and cosmonauts playing wooden roles. A 1984 Soviet film, “Return from Orbit,” included scenes filmed in the area.
But “The Challenge” would be the first fiction feature film shot at Array and “the first to send an actor and director for that purpose,” Mr. Pearlman.
And that, he said, will come with “some bragging rights involved. “
Oleg Matsnev contributed to the report
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