Based on the true story of Russian pilot Valeri Chkalov (1904 - 1938), who set several long-distance flight records. Chkalov and co-pilots Baidukov and Belyakov altogether had accomplished several nonstop long-distance flights. In June 1937, Chkalov set the world record, covering 12,000 kilometers in 63 hours of nonstop flight from Moscow to Vancouver, Washington, flying over the North Pole.

Written by Sergei Mihalkov, a popular children’s poet who also wrote the lyrics to the Soviet National Anthem. Jazz was an early victim of the Cold War, condemned as “an enemy of the people.” In this film for children, a Soviet bird returns home from abroad and gives a concert. When she sings jazz, a new kind of music she learned on her travels, the Soviet birds boo and hiss and drive her from the forest.

Note: Whatever the official policy, jazz was popular in the USSR and was used in the score of many later films in this series.