Documentarian Christian Frei Welcomes "Space Tourists"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Monday, 22 February 2010 03:27

Written by Brad Balfour

Q: You made the transition from this past to this present and future. You were able to resist the temptation to show a lot more about what the [spacefaring private corporation] Virgin [Galactic] is doing; you have just a little reference. But to see it through the eyes of this Russian way of approaching…

CF: I’m glad you say that because I didn't want to include too much U.S. and Virgin Galactic. First, the access there wouldn't have been easy either, and somehow I just felt this is not a film. So I just included this crazy Romanian guy; he's part of this race.

Q: And the woman is...

CF: She is very much involved in the whole thing because she was the first sponsor with her family, with the $10 million for this prize. What could I have filmed during this time? They were announcing for three years now the space tour, they had this fatal accident before, so as you can see, everything you do with technology is always a risk. It's not really interesting for me; I think it wouldn't really fit.

Q: Aren't you surprised there aren't more accidents?

CF: They didn't begin yet.

Q: I mean overall, in the history of the Russian space program, and even the American space program.

CF: It's a risk of 1% fatality. 1% is big; normally with a sport it's much less.

Q: Did you try on one of the spacesuits yourself?

CF: Yeah. They are heavy. And another curiosity was that I wanted Anousheh to bring the spacesuit to Sundance, so I asked her very politely and said I would cover all the costs, because this is a heavy thing. The cost to produce it is $100,000, I know that, and you cannot use it for any other guy; every spacesuit, obviously, is exact.

She said, "My spacesuit is in Moscow," and I asked why. "Well, because they asked me to pay another million for it." It’'s true; I swear to God. It's a rip-off; they are really over the edge.

Q: She never feels guilty for spending so much money on this indulgent dream?

CF: No. She's writing now her autobiography, and Homer Hickam [author of Rocket Boys] is the co-author. It will be released March 2 and you can read her story. It's a very honest story, and she helps people.

Q: Have you ever heard the term “future-primitive”? There’s a sort of future-primitive quality, futuristic-retro, to this film.

CF: I wanted this paradox in the poster because I wanted people to be aware of the curiosity that this is something different than the usual rockets.

Q: I thought the music was an interesting choice because it was both contemporary and yet  travelistic.

CF: Another choice was this Russian composer, Edward Artemiev. He is a pioneer of electronic music, and he was the composer of the famous films by [director Andei] Tarkosvky, Solaris and Stalker. Somehow there was an influence because I thought, I don't want Baikonur just to be presented like a deserted area that's nothing but wind and some camels. I think there was so much going on here, every week there was a rocket, so I wanted to feel this. I choose my music in the very early stage of the filmmaking; I underline the pictures with music.

Q: I believe strongly in the space program, and I believe in commercialization of space; I believe it's important that we go into space for the evolution of culture. But when you watch this movie you wonder whether it doesn't feel a little bit more absurd on some level. I had mixed feelings  about the film's ultimate conclusion, that there's this beauty of it and this sort of charm, but also this weird naïveté.

CF: I think this naïveté is my statement, because I feel, yes, what I want to say is that you cannot keep this any longer as that simple. We know now. How come it was announced for decades, and even [Stanley] Kubrick in his 2001: A Space Odyssey press kit was stating that what he's showing is the future. [I believe] it will be totally, exactly like that in 2001. Like this comfortable spaceship — he was sure that this will be a reality.

Q: He was right, but it's just not quite the right date.

CF: Come on, I mean, look at the tubes now in the ISS.

Q: You don't think that by 2050 space travel will be commonplace?

CF: I think I lost this naïveté.

Q: Because you see the difficulties.

CF: It's 40 years now. More. It was announced in the '60s and you had this climax of this fantasy.

Q: I think their problem was they were living in a fantasy. This movie is more about the reality.

CF: Yeah, exactly, but that's why I think, for example, yes, you can do space tourism in a few years, for sure. It will always be expensive to get somebody into orbit,  because you need this huge speed of 27,000 miles an hour, and you have to speed this down and you cannot do that with small computers, you need heavy things, and it heats you up so much.

Q: We need to go with the Star Trek vision; develop the transporters, take the technology up into space, build up there, and use the transporters. You're from a country that has the largest particle accelerator.

CF: 'm aware of that; I love it.

Q: The Swiss are sort of this old, conservative, classic European, and yet there's this other side to it.

CF: Switzerland has nothing; we don't have anything in the ground. We have only our brains. We have a very high level of education, for example, and a broader one than you have in the U.S.

Q: Do you want to go into space?

CF: If I were very rich, yes.... The film dreams will be bigger than the space dreams.

Q: Sell sponsorships on your suit.

CF: The Romanian guy, it's obvious he won’'t get to the moon with this. That’s why I'm fascinated by this because it's also fantasy.

Q: When you made this film, did you feel that now that you've done it you're going to continue to stay on top of it, or you want to look completely away from it?

CF: No, because I'm so slow. One of the big advantages is everything is inside me doesn’t just go away. When there's news about Cuba I have a feeling for it beyond journalistic approach, because I can smell it, I was for months living there and I know about this revolution. So when it will be over, I will be very much concerned. Exactly the same with Afghanistan and now with the space thing. I love this, that I am able to research so excessively.

Q: You get yourself really passionate about it. Would you like to see that they would finally open this up so people can see these old locations?

CF: Actually, there is some tourism.

Q: I had no idea. How about meeting the old cosmonauts?

CF: They live in Star City, for example, [which] s not in Kazakhstan, like some in the U.S. were writing. Star City is close to Moscow, Russia. [Star City] is the training center. There are hundreds of these guys living there still.

Q: So you had the chance to talk and meet with all of them?

CF: Some of them, yeah. Like the first woman in space.

Q: And the first private woman in space. It's interesting how we don't always give the Russians credit, but in that area they really had some innovations that the Americans couldn't deal with.

CF: It's just the bloody moon landing they didn't get, from their point of view. They were feeling even superior in the first stage of the space race.

Q: What do you feel about space travel? What do you think is going to happen?

CF: I think we will see a commercialization of space because they are discovering [minerals] on the moon, I don’t know exactly…

Q: They're talking about organic substances and also about deposits in pure form.

CF: So I think this is just the first stage of the commercialization of space.

Q: So then would you go up when you could do so for twenty grand?

CF: I'm not that sure if this will include what Anousheh is doing and will be affordable, because now I know so much about the needs and physics of it. It's also a paradox of history; look at the successes in space exploration of the last five years. Most of them were unmanned; it's the robots fascinating us on Mars with all these beautiful pictures and all this exploration. More and more, manned space exploration was more and more criticized.

Q: What's next for you? You get so intensively involved in a subject, how do you wrench yourself out of it to go on to the next thing?

CF: Now I have three important festivals behind me. I have to do some more but mostly because I want to see other people's work. I'm already working on my next subject which, unfortunately for you, I cannot tell you. But I'm in the midst of it because [Space Tourists] for me is now, in terms of filmmaking, it's past. I’m working on a short version, I will work on a DVD version, but this is not the core of it.

Q: Because you’re already now a successful documentary filmmaker with an Oscar nomination it probably makes certain filmmaking things easier in terms of access.

CF: Space Tourist wasn't easy at all. The Russians are not very much impressed. What I do is I don't often tell them I'm a filmmaker, and I'm allowed to do that: I tell them I'm a journalist from Swiss TV, because that makes access much easier. [If you say you're a filmmaker, then] you have somebody from the ministry [assigned to you] and then you’re lost. My reputation helps me to raise the money a little bit but it's still a struggle.

Q: Did you get to take back any space junk with you?

CF: I have some. I was a bit afraid at customs because I knew how much secrecy there is about.

Q: Because this is a bit lighter a subject for you, do you think it will get the same kind of attention that you’ve gotten in the past?

CF: War Photographer got the most attention. The Giant Buddhas got a lot, too, because it was in the festival circuit, and here in the U.S. my films are on the documentary channels and HBO and then on Netflix, which is also important. I'm not expecting American families to go watch these films in the movie theaters, so I would be happy for a small theatrical release in New York and then DVD and TV.

Q: Did the Oscar nomination make anything easier for you? Did it make a difference?

CF: It helps, of course, because it's such a label. And it's still a label and remains a label, and the interesting thing is people are more aware of the documentary branch, which perhaps 15 years ago no one cared about. I feel that in documentary filmmaking there's so much energy. We do have the feeling that we have a broader range of expression than in fiction.

We have mainstream documentaries now, which I like. Not all these films should look the same. It’s just important that the audience knows there’s another way of presenting reality other than through the normal journalistic narration.

For more by Brad Balfour: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-balfour

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