Who were the men and women of Project Apollo? Where are they today? What do they think of the extraordinary effort they helped make possible? Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing in 2019, When We Were Apollo is an intimate and personal look at the Apollo Space Program through the lives and experiences of some of its most inspiring behind-the-scenes figures: engineers, technicians, builders and contractors who spent the better part of a decade working to get us to the moon and back.
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The Dream Is Alive (1985)
The Dream Is Alive takes you into space alongside the astronauts on the space shuttle. Share with them the delights of zero gravity while working, eating and sleeping in orbit around the Earth. Float as never before over the towering Andes, the boot of Italy, Egypt and the Nile. Witness firsthand a tension-filled satellite capture and repair and the historic first spacewalk by an American woman.
Who Invented the Yoyo? Who Invented the Moon Buggy? (1979)
Stuck in the German lands of “Yodelburg,” our hero Kidlat dreams of space and muses on humanity’s endless capacity for creativity, whether on the moon or at home in the Philippines. A delightful, self-proclaimed “third-world space spectacle.”
The Voyagers (2010)
In the summer of 1977, NASA sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 on an epic journey into interstellar space. Together and alone, they will travel until the end of the universe. Each spacecraft carries a golden record album, a massive compilation of images and sounds embodying the best of Planet Earth. According to Carl Sagan, “[t]he spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” While working on the golden record, Sagan met and fell madly in love with his future wife Annie Druyan. The record became their love letter to humankind and to each other. In the summer of 2010, I began my own hopeful voyage into the unknown. This film is a love letter to my fellow traveler. - Penny Lane
CARA-B (2023)
A desktop documentary that focuses on the Golden Record that NASA sent into space in the late 1970s. The piece reflects on issues such as the power of scientific discourse to produce revisions of the world, the evolution of the concept of the archive and the resignification of borders in the rhetoric of space colonialism.
Failure Is Not an Option (2003)
The Space Race comes alive through the eyes of the ultimate insider - retired NASA Mission Control Flight Director Gene Kranz. A history of the U.S. manned space program from Mercury to Apollo 17, as seen by the men of Mission Control.
Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon (2005)
Twelve men who belong to one of the world's most exclusive fraternities -- people who've walked on the surface of the moon -- are paid homage in this documentary. Using newsreel footage, rare NASA photographs, and digitally animated re-creations, Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon examines the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972 which put astronauts on the moon.
Manufacturing Ignorance (2020)
Tobacco, climate change, pesticides,... Never has scientific knowledge seemed so vast, detailed and shared. And yet it appears to be increasingly challenged. It is no longer surprising to see private corporations put strategies in place to confuse the public debate and paralyze political decision-making. Overwhelmed by excess of information, how can we, as citizens, sort out fact from fiction? One by one, this film dismantles the workings of this clever manoeuvre that aims to turn science against itself. Thanks to declassified archives, graphic animations and testimonies from experts, lobbyists and politicians, this investigation plunges us into the science of doubt. Along with a team of experts (philosophers, economists, cognitive scientists, political men, or even agnotologists), we explore concrete examples of doubt making and try to understand the whole process and the issues behind it.
Hope & Fury: MLK, the Movement and the Media (2018)
A documentary following the civil rights movement and how the media, in particular the burgeoning TV, was used to fight for equality in the 1960s. From Selma to Charlottesville, we also see how modern activists use today's technology to continue fighting injustice today.
Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo (2017)
At the heart of the Apollo program was the special team in Mission Control who put a man on the moon and helped create the future.
His Name was Robeson (1998)
The film tells about a previously unknown episode of Paul Robeson’s biography — a secret conversation in 1949 in a room at the Moscow Hotel with the Jewish poet Itzik Feffer, who told Robeson the circumstances of Mikhoels' death. Paul Robeson Jr. shares his memories, having learned about this secret just before the death of his father, and it is the first time he tells the filmmakers about it.
Citizen Shane (2004)
A porn-loving, Charles Manson-befriending, Mississippi Republican runs to become the next sheriff.
Microchip Wars (2023)
When the pandemic hit it highlighted how much Western countries rely on the chip industry. Today Europe, America and China are involved in an intense commercial struggle to dominate this sector that is so strategic for the future. From Taiwan to Shanghai, via Brussels and San Francisco, investigative journalist Nicolas Vescovacci went to meet the most influential players in this microchip war, which is redefining world geopolitics.
The Year of Pluto (2015)
New Horizons is the first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt of rocky, icy objects beyond. Principal Investigator Alan Stern leads a mission team that includes the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Southwest Research Institute, Ball Aerospace Corporation, the Boeing Company, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Stanford University, KinetX, Inc., Lockheed Martin Corporation, University of Colorado, the U.S. Department of Energy, and a number of other firms, NASA centers and university partners.
The Gulag Archipelago: The Book That Changed Russian History (2023)
The story of Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) and his masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, published in Paris in 1973, which forever shook the very foundations of communist ideology.
La Mission Priviet (2004)
A mysterious film, featuring three Russian cosmonauts heading into space, is found. This document is the only and last trace remaining of these three men. A team of journalists decides to investigate in Kazakhstan to solve the mystery of their disappearance.
The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks (2023)
An immersive documentary focusing on the story of the Apollo space program
