(Spurious) Soviet Pigs in Space

My local brewmaster Sean forwarded me a series of photos supposedly documenting an old Soviet effort to put pigs into space. In the sequence of stills, which you can find here (you might have to click on the image to enlarge it), a pig is given a drink, strapped into its capsule, then launched upwards via a large cannon to return to earth and root around. These images, especially that of the odd-looking mortar used to launch the pig, seemed too good to be true. After poking around a bit it seems that these are stills from a 2005 Russian mockumentary entitled Pervye na lune (First on the Moon), directed by Aleksey Fedorchenko. You can find information about the film at its official site (in Russian) here. The Soviet space program was well-known for its use of dogs in early flights. You can find a pretty good wikipedia account of that program here.