Krasnogorski ITW Screening & Closing Ceremonies

Photos...
1. ITW screening crowd
2. Closing ceremony performance
3. Festival Participants & Film groupies
4. Chris & Dave with honorable mention plaque
5. Chris & Julia (Festival Curator)

Our screening was moved from Wednesday afternoon to Friday afternoon. We had a good showing with a nice crowd to see "Into the Wind", (photo of crowd in the cinema lobby). We were approached by several people after the screening to shake hands and comment about the movie. A couple of very well known Russian directors pulled me aside and told me how much they liked the movie, and how beautiful the footage was.
Later Friday evening was the closing ceremonies for the festival. About 30 of us boarded a large bus outside our hotel at 4:00 pm. The evening festivities were to begin at 7:00 pm in a convention center located about one hour away traveling by bus. About two hours later, we were still in the bus and were no where near the destination. (Moscow traffic is a bitch!) We were told by someone that the weekends are time to get away to a country house and most of the population of Moscow was headed out of town. We got to the convention center at about 9:00 pm! The bus ride from hell for sure. (no bar, and no bathroom on the bus = no good).
The festival people herd us into the auditorium and it is set up really nice. There were two emcees, guy and gal, who spoke in Russian (of course, hey we're in Russia after all!)The evening was full of awards, speeches, musical performers, singers, and the most memorable rendition of "Strangers in the night" by the female emcee, (in English) including the "dooby dooby doo" part. This was not a joke performance, totally serious. Dave & I will be breaking into the "dooby dooby doo" lyric for the rest of our lives with a wink and a smile remembering this evening. Not like a typical American festival for sure.
ITW got an honorable mention, and I was called on stage to accept the plaque with all the other award winners. Two Russian male singers rushed out and sang the official festival song, very popular with the Russian festival goers, all singing along.
Afterwards, back to the bus, (only an hour to get back!) and over to the "Golden Fish" restaurant / bar for a late meal and some cold Piva's (beer's for you that haven't been paying attention). A long day for sure, I think the clock read 3:00 am when I hit the pillow.

Monino Russian Air Force Museum

Dave & I were lucky enough to meet one of the PPG pilots (Andrew) on Thursday whose father is a retired Russian Air Force pilot who was stationed at Monino Air Base during his career. Andrew heard Dave & I talking to Dmitry about making a phone call to Monino as translator to get permission to visit the museum there. Andrew's father just happened to be there watching his son's first solo, and they had a discussion that resulted in a couple of phone calls to officials at the base. Andrew pulled me aside and said "I will be your guide." I looked at him and said "What?" He said, "I'll pick you up from your hotel, and take you to Monino, get you in and serve as guide / interpreter." WOW! How cool was that! I told him we could take the Metro (subway) from downtown out to meet him, but he insisted on picking us up, easier that way.

Andrew met us in front of the hotel at 7:30 am on Friday morning and we headed to Monino. It seems Andrew was on a week vacation and it was somewhat of a treat to practice his English and visit his childhood home.
As we got to the base entrance, Andrew told us to lose the sunglasses, and ball caps, etc. Don't smile so much, and try to look more Russian. I guess it was just easier to get us into the base without explaining so much. We stayed in the car and Andrew got our permit to enter. We then drove through the base to the museum area.

Andrew went in to get us tickets to tour the museum but returned just a few minutes later. He asked if we had our passports, (we did) and rushed us into a hanger. A middle aged Russian woman took our passports and visas, talked to Andrew in Russian, asked for about 1500 rubles, (about $64 U.S.) and sent us on our way. Right about then an older gentleman approached with some booklets. He talked with Andrew and then Andrew told us he was a retired Air Force colonel pilot that had personally flown in a lot of the planes to the museum. He walked us out to the museum area and talked to us a bit using Andrew as a go between. (See photo, he's in the middle between Dave & I with the giant helicopter behind us.) We were like kids in a candy store taking picture after picture and getting the translation from Andrew about each plane, helicopter, and aircraft.

If you saw the movie "Firefox" with Clint Eastwood about stealing a Russian super fighter plane you'll see in the other photo above, there really was a plane that looked like the one in the movie. We saw so many planes, including the Russian Concorde, a space shuttle test vehicle, the first all metal Russian airplane, and many more. It was an incredible day! I'll be posting more photos and video later, and I'm sure some of this experience will make it into ITW II.

More info about the museum...

The Central Museum of the Air Forces at Monino, Russia is located approximately 38 kilometers (24 miles) from Moscow along the Gorky Highway in a lovely wooded area. It is the largest and best aviation museum in Russia. The museum was formerly known as The Russian Federation Air Force Museum and, prior to that, The USSR Air Force Museum. The facility was an operational air base from 1932 through April, 1956. The museum was founded in 1958 and opened in 1960 at the original airfield location and in the original airfield structures. The area was off-limits to civilians during the Soviet era so it has been neither easy to find nor easy to access. Advance permission to visit the museum was recently required for non-Russian citizens. The facilities are largely unimproved and the majority of aircraft are exposed to the harsh Russian weather. Many of the Russian aviation Design Bureaus (Tupolev, Ilyushin, Antonov, Mikoyan, etc.) have contributed exhibits and resources to the museum and its maintenance. Despite these conditions, the aircraft are in surprisingly good shape and most are sitting on the original tires they landed at the Monino airfield with. This is a testament to the museum employees who have a great historical legacy to preserve.

Here's a link to a photo album logging most of the aircraft at the museum...

http://www.moninoaviation.com/ix.html

More to come...

CP & DG

Moscow Days 4 & 5

We have been busy the last 2 days. Yesterday morning I arranged to Meet with Russian PPG pilot / instructor / dealer for a day of flying. Dave & We went by taxi to the destination, about 25 kilometers from our hotel. Moscow traffic is unbelievable. 20 million people with somewhere to go. There are a lot of cars and not too many rules. Everyone is jockeying for position and then go as fast as they can to the next back up of cars. Our taxi driver was good, but he drove like a madman. Sometimes to to 80 mph on surface streets, then slamming on the brakes, honking and going around cars and buses where there is no lane. Just about all traffic seems to work this way. The pedestrians just walk out, and sometimes are in the middle of a lane as traffic fly's past, acting like no big deal, just life in the big city.

We arrived at a McDonalds in the outskirts of the ciy, our meeting place, and it was packed with people. Their fries are just like in USA though, Micky D's has the best fries world wide it seems. Dmitry drove up shortly after and we headed to the LZ.

Moscow has a police traffic station at every entrance / exit to Moscow and they have several video cameras above the traffic before you reach the station. If they see you have an expired tag or the wrong information, or your plate shows up with any violation, they have policemen / molitia waiting with a pointer stick to pull you over. Usually they fine you on the spot, and Dmitry says it usually goes right in their pocket, not the government. Dmitry had an expired tag or something and told me after the fact, why he was behind a tall truck in the traffic and keeping his front bumper on the trucks back bumper. The camera couldn't see him that way. :-)

We made it through and then to a petrol station. Gas is sold by the litre, about 23 rubles per litre, somewhere around $4.00 US per gallon.

We made it to the LZ soon after and met up with a few other pilots. This was about noon or so. The winds were variable from about 7 mph to maybe 12 - 15 mph gusting. I got up with a bit of a struggle, high hang points (not use to them) and the wind shifting. Also a borrowed helmet that kept falling over my eyes. I lost the helmet and the got in the air. VERY Bumpy! I wouldn't normally fly in those type of conditions but this was the only chance in Russia.

While I was in the air, A two seat trike PPG was getting ready to take off. I had lost track of Dave on the ground. They get in the air and I find Dave in the front seat! With the other HD camera! I could see them getting bumped hard, rocking back and forth. His pilot was very experienced and we circled each other, sometimes close to get some good footage. There is much more to the story but I have to close for now.

Today we went to the Monino Military Air Force Museum. Another great story to come

Photo of me at Monino...

(Sorry for any mistakes, no time to proof and the interface is in Russian for spell check.)

CP & DG.

Moscow Day 3

Didn't have a chance to post yesteday and we're on our way to the outskirts of Moscow this morning to meet up with Dmitry Kulikov for some PPG flying. The weather has taken a turn for the better. Blue skies and slightly warmer temps. Today looks perfect so far.

Dave & I worked on the movie short project yesterday morning. Lots of curious citizens wondering what the hell we were doing. Also, military and police stopping us several times to see what we were doing. The tripod is a dead giveaway that we aren't just doing snapshot stuff. I'd just smile and say "American Tourist" and they would say some stuff in Russian and tell us to move along.

About noon we rode the metro, (subway) to the festival cinema. They had arranged for us to meet with a Russian female champion boxer. We had a photo op, and then saw a slide show of her upcoming movie. She is a tall slim beautiful blonde that could probably knock you out with one punch.

Dave & I then went to the Kremlin and took the armory tour. Very cool indeed just being inside the Kremlin, but to see all the historical artifacts was amazing.

Have to run for now, more later.

Photos - Chris in front of the festival cinema, Dave & Chris enjoying a couple of cold ones in a Pub somewhere in central Moscow (we were lost at the time, but didn't really care).

CP & DG.

Wow, 24 hours in Moscow and we took advantage of the time. I couldn't sleep very well and just went ahead and got out of bed at about 5 am. Got ready and then took a walk. Talked to some Russian (Police? Military?) and asked to get a picture with them. No sense of humor, no pictures. I finally knocked on Dave's door about 7:30 and told him to quit wasting daylight.
We went to breakfast, some kind of hash, toast, strong coffee, cheese, & yogurt. At least if filled us up.

We were free until about 6:15 pm so we walked to Red Square. It sure is smaller than you imagine it to be from the old news video of the tanks and military parading through there. Don't get me wrong, it's incredible to be standing there, but just smaller than you imagine. St. Basils cathedral is at one end of the square and it is just incredible.

We paid to take the tour, one price (about 100 rubles) to tour, 130 rubles to tour and take photos, 150 rubles to tour and take video. Capitalism, got to love it. Inside the cathedral is amazing, the paintings and history of the place, you can just smell it. There was an acapella choir singing in one of the main rooms with a huge dome way above, the acoustics were unbelievable, when we first got close we thought it was being piped in from a sound system. I didn't pay to video inside but had to sneak a little bit of the choir, just wonderful.

We spent a lot of time inside the cathedral and when we were done the weather turned even colder and started raining harder. We decided to check out the largest mall inRussia, (GUM) it borders one side of Red Square and was once offices for the government. The mall has over 1000 shops and is quite grand. An archway glass ceiling that is similar to the galleria in Houston. A slice of pizza and a beer later and we were on our way to more walking around.

Opening cerimonies and a movie, then a late dinner and then home at 1:30 am it was a long day. Gotta cut this off for now. Stay tuned.

Comrades Chris & Dave.

Watch out Moscow - ITW arrived

After a long flight we get to DME airport just outside Moscow. I tell Dave, "Hey man, just shoot some video of me while I get my immigration papers done. As I hand my passport and papers to the official, he looks over my shoulder and starts yelling at Dave in Russian. I couldn't understand a word but by his tone I knew it meant something like, "Hey you stupid American, you can't video tape in here!" So I'm giving him the international sign for "cut" (hand waiving across the neck) and we get through with no more yelling.

Went out last night for a couple of beers, (Piva's). and found a place called "The Golden Fish". Some of the locals spoke a little bit of english and we smoked cigars, toasted beers, and BS'd with them the best we could. Until two of the younger local "tough" guys told some other guys they planned to roll us and take our money. We got a way clean after they had even more drinks. Don't think they could have taken us in their condition, but you never know. Alexei and Boris, two other locals we met, walked out with us and made sure we made it safe to our hotel's street. They were pretty toasted too, but all was well and we made it back safe.

Our hotel is very near Red Sqaure and we are going walk over there after breakfast.

Dobre Utre (good morning)

Comrade Chris & Dave

Leaving for Moscow

We leave for Russia tonight at 11:35 pm. (I'm holding the Russian phrase book in one hand and the Sony HD Z1 Camera in the other, lots of other camera goodies in the backpack.)

We'll arrive tomorrow night around 10:00 pm their time, around 11.5 hours in the air, (ouch). I've been in contact with a pilot over there, and he says he has me covered for PPG equipment. Now all we need is for the weather to cooperate.




Dave & I will be working on a segment for ITW II, and another movie short (not about PPG) to enter in film festivals, etc.

Stay Tuned...



Comrades Chris, & Dave.



Do Svidania