Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Start your free trial

Already subscribed? Sign in

State of Weightlessness

UR rating icon
Russia & the Former Soviet Union • 1h 0m

Directed by Maciej J. Drygas • Documentary • 1994 • 60 minutes

State of Weightlessness is a documentary that uses long-duration Soviet space missions as a lens through which to examine the psychological and historical dislocation of the late Cold War period. Drawing on rare audio recordings from orbit, the film explores how cosmonauts experienced isolation, suspension, and uncertainty while the political system that sent them into space was collapsing below. The physical condition of weightlessness becomes a metaphor for a broader state of ideological and existential drift, linking technological ambition to the human consequences of geopolitical transformation.

Tags
archival documentary, astronauts, astronomy, cold war, communism, cosmonauts, eastern europe, epf media, european history, expository, human experience, isolation, marxism and communism, ovid, post-soviet transition, psychology, psychology and mental health, russia, russia and the former soviet union, russian space program, russian studies, science, science and technology, slavik studies, soviet space program, soviet-era history, space exploration, stan nieważkości, state of weightlessness, technology, the 1950s and the cold war

Up Next in Russia & the Former Soviet Union

  • Sampo
    1:30:13
    Sampo

    Sampo

    Directed by Aleksandr Ptushko • Drama • With Anna Orochko, Urho Somersalmi, Andris Osins • 1959 • 91 minutes

    Based on the Finnish national epic "Kalevala," director Aleksandr Ptushko's ravishing, mystical fantasy tells the story of a sinister witch Louhi (Anna Orochko) who covets the Sampo, a ma...

  • Ruslan and Ludmila
    2:25:51
    Ruslan and Ludmila

    Ruslan and Ludmila

    Directed by Aleksandr Ptushko • Drama • With Valeri Kozinets, Natalya Petrova, Vladimir Fyodorov • 1972 • 145 minutes

    The final film from Russian fantasy master Aleksandr Ptushko (ILYA MUROMETS, SAMPO), RUSLAN AND LUDMILA was a glorious and magical summation of his career. Based on an epic fairy...

  • Zerograd
    1:41:40
    Zerograd

    Zerograd

    Directed by Karen Shakhnazarov • Drama • With Vladimir Menshov, Leonid Filatov • 1988 • 102 minutes

    Part Kafka, part Agatha Christie and part Monty Python, Russian director Karen Shakhnazarov's surreal satire of Communism follows an Everyman engineer named Varakin (Leonid Filatov) who arrives in...

×