The Coolidge Corner Theatre

America thinks Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first pioneers to the moon, Alexei Fedorchenko’s mocumentary and debut film proves them wrong. FIRST ON THE MOON reveals a Soviet cosmonaut, Ivan Kharlamov, who traveled there and back in 1938. He pilots his secretive space craft back to Chile, from where he undertook an arduous journey across the Pacific, through China and Mongolia finally finishing in Mother Russia. First on the Moon is a wonderful expression of the utopian spirit--the sense of limitless possibilities of human ingenuity and imagination--of the Space Race that raged during the 1950s and ‘60s before the American’s accomplishments shadowed the Soviet experience.

(2005) dir. Alexei Fedorchencko, on DVD, 1h15m, in Russian with English subtitles.