For All Mankind

"The twenty-four astronauts who traveled to the moon between 1968 and 1972 were, in Al Reinertēs words, 'the first extraterrestrial humans.' This is the story of their voyage to another world, captured on their film (NASA outfitted them all with 16 mm cameras) and in their own words, it will knock your socks off. The footage is spectacular. Like tourists, the astronauts reflexively reached for their cameras when something surprising or simply beautiful floated into view, which was about every five minutes. The first glimpse of what astronaut Harrison Schmitt called the 'beautifully, brilliantly illuminated blue marble that we call the earth' was only the first shot to make us swallow hard. Reinertēs movie is 'pure reality;' he realized that the stuff of myth requires no embellishment (thank heavens Spielberg or Disney didn't get there first.) From 238,000 miles up, God-squad moments and timeworn phrases--'one small step for man,' 'man must explore,' 'mankind's greatest adventure'--are not clichés; but the intimate thoughts of humble, eloquent men exquisitely aware of their own vulnerability and extraordinary privilege. There's plenty of clowning around, too--dancing on the moon, weightless ham-sandwich making. The contrast between human antics and the vastness of space had us constantly reaching for reality checks, only to remember that it really was happening. Describing himself as more an archaeologist than a filmmaker, Reinert spent ten years conducting eighty hours of interviews and dealing with a warehouse full of NASA film. From blastoff to splashdown, For All Mankind is a composite of all the Apollo missions combined, the grandest human undertaking in history. The transmissions from Mission Control are fun, too (sideburns at the Cape Canaveral consoles!) Besides the seventy-nine-minute film, the CD contains extensive information about the Apollo missions, including an animated illustration of a typical lunar voyage, maps of lunar landing sites, and diagrams of spacecrafts and materials; an extensive interview with the filmmaker accompanied by one hundred images from NASA archives; a glossary of all the technical terms and incomprehensible NASA acronyms; biographies of all the Apollo astronauts by Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon; original essays about what the moon is made of, how it feels to be weightless, and other neat astro-trivia; and Brian Eno's haunting original soundtrack in 16-bit stereo." -- From Voyager