The only old Soviet sf movie I knew was the redoubtable Aelita: Queen of Mars. Unless you count capitalist/medieval plutocrats as monsters, it's all human characters, and a fascinating glimpse of the NEP. IMDB doesn't know "Cosmic Voyage", but they do have Kosmicheskiy reys. The science fiction film "Kosmicheskii Reis" was first shown in Soviet theaters in January 1936. Soviet cinematographers created a progressively realistic image of a journey to the moon in these early days of special effects. Scientist Pavel Sedikh grows impatient with the restrictions of the conservative Soviet space institute in Moscow. Sedikh builds his own spacecraft, and accompanied by a female astronaut and a boy, he embarks on a the first human trip to the moon.
I don't read Russian, but in this synopsis "Sedikh builds his own spacecraft" seems a bit off. He may be unhappy with the pace of the program, but the rocket is clearly the product of a huge industrial effort with many collaborators.
Would be nice for someone to transcribe the title cards; then the text could be translated or, at worst, run through translation software, so that those who do not speak Russian would have a shot at understanding the dialogue.
Screengrab --> Cyrillc OCR --> Russian text -->Google Translate --> English/Spanish/whatever... then persuade a human to tweak the rough machine translation.
Or post the screengrabs somewhere, and crowdsource the translation.
What would it take to grab all the title cards, maybe one evening's work?
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IMDB doesn't know "Cosmic Voyage", but they do have Kosmicheskiy reys.
The science fiction film "Kosmicheskii Reis" was first shown in Soviet theaters in January 1936. Soviet cinematographers created a progressively realistic image of a journey to the moon in these early days of special effects. Scientist Pavel Sedikh grows impatient with the restrictions of the conservative Soviet space institute in Moscow. Sedikh builds his own spacecraft, and accompanied by a female astronaut and a boy, he embarks on a the first human trip to the moon.
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Would be nice for someone to transcribe the title cards; then the text could be translated or, at worst, run through translation software, so that those who do not speak Russian would have a shot at understanding the dialogue.
Screengrab --> Cyrillc OCR --> Russian text -->Google Translate --> English/Spanish/whatever... then persuade a human to tweak the rough machine translation.
Or post the screengrabs somewhere, and crowdsource the translation.
What would it take to grab all the title cards, maybe one evening's work?
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