The Sun Ship Game (1971)

Flying hundreds of miles a day through wild weather with no engine requires feats of airmanship unprecedented in human history and known before only to the birds. George Moffat and Gleb Derujinsky are great pilots and good friends who compete in the sport of Soaring for speed and distance in aircraft without engines - sleek competition gliders. Both would like to win the U.S. Soaring Championship. Derujinsky relies most on feel and creative impulse to sense his way through invisible air currents. Moffat does the same but relies more on a hand calculator he constantly works in his cockpit. This film 'The Sun Ship Game', voyages with both pilots into the sky at a regional contest in Vermont and into wild weather with eighty three other competitors in Marfa, Texas. Through eight days of hard flying in skies alternately filled with brilliant beauty and black violence, their two approaches arrive at a dramatic conclusion and one of them is named the U.S. Champion.

Date of release
1971-01-01
Runtime
1h 22m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Robert Drew

Casting

Interesting facts

The Sun Ship Game is a 1971 documentary film about competition soaring in the United States. Shot in Cinéma vérité style by filmmaker Robert Drew, the film follows the adventures of George Moffat and Gleb Derujinsky as they vie for the title of US National Champion soaring pilot in 1969. While the film focuses primarily on the friendly rivalry between Moffat and Derujinsky, Moffat's truer nemesis in the film is Wally Scott, flying his Schleicher ASW 12.

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