First Orbit - global translation project and DVD/Blu-ray release

The success of Chris Riley’s spectacular feature-length film First Orbit, re-living the original flight of the first man in space Yuri Gagarin, has been celebrated at the International Astronautical Congress 2011 in Cape Town, following the presentation of a paper about the film by Dr Chris Welch from the International Space University.

The film provided a new view of the Earth, filmed exclusively for the project by ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli from the Cupola window of the ISS in January 2011. It matched the exact location and time of day viewed by Gagarin with the original audio from his flight.

The paper presented revealed that First Orbit was premièred on more than 1600 screens in over 130 countries, making it one of the most widely premièred independent films in history. And the YouTube première alone generated over 2 million viewings within 48 hours, making it the most watched long form film release in YouTube history.

Following this success, the First Orbit team have now put out a new call to action to try and 'crowd source' translations of the film into as many languages as possible - to make it even more accessible for future anniversary screenings.

Further information can be found at http://www.firstorbit.org/join-us.

UPDATE: Latest information about the translation project and Blu-ray/DVD release can be found here.