Come along and ride on a Cosmic Voyage

Slide, slide, slippity-slide, hittin' switches on the block in a '65... oh, sorry, wrong kind of voyage. Anyway, this Cosmic Voyage promises to be pretty much as rad as anything Coolio's ever done. Based on early space travel theorist Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovsky's novel Beyond the Earth, Cosmic Voyage (Kosmicheskiy reys: Fantasticheskaya novella) portrays humans in space 25 years before Yuri Gagarin's historical journey. It's presented as part of the Austin Film Society's Other Minds, Other Worlds: Global Sci Fi Cinema series running through July 31.

Cosmic Voyage features an elderly scientist, Pavel Sedikh, overcoming the restrictions of the Moscow Institute for Interplanetary Travel to construct his own spaceship (ironically named the Joseph Stalin) and bring his female assistant (as well as a young stowaway) with him to the moon. These early cosmonauts cope with the trauma of liftoff by immersing themselves in liquid, experience freedom from gravity within the spaceship, and leap joyously between craters on the moon. The group even rescues a cat that was stranded on the moon when an earlier rocket journey failed, and uses frozen oxygen found on the moon to save them when the ship's oxygen supply dwindles (hey, like we said, it was made in 1936). The characters' voyage is basically every wannabe astronaut's dream--only in black and white, and from 70 years ago. The special effects are impressive, particularly considering the era, and create a strikingly realistic picture of space flight.

Check out Cosmic Voyage at the Alamo Downtown tonight and experience the magic of a sci fi classic that was amazingly prescient for its day. If, like Coolio, you're just tryin' to find a place where you can live your life, space just might be it. As Tsiolkovsky, the film's inspiration, observed: "The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever." So get on up and go--if not to space, at least to the movie theatre.

AFS Essentials: Cosmic Voyage
Tuesday, June 12th
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
7pm, Free for members / $4 for non-members
[Tickets]