In the Shadow of the Moon

Between 1968 and 1972, nine American spacecraft voyaged to the Moon, and 12 men walked on its surface. They remain the only human beings to have stood on another world. IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON brings together for the first, and possibly the last, time surviving crew members from every single Apollo mission that flew to the Moon, and allows them to tell their story in their own words.

This riveting first-hand testimony is interwoven with visually stunning archival material which has been re-mastered from the original NASA film footage ˆ much of it never used before. The result is an intimate epic that vividly communicates the daring, the danger, the pride, and the promise of this extraordinary era in history when the whole world literally looked up at America.

"This exquisite documentary about the Apollo program takes the magic of moon flight and miraculously makes it downright down-to-Earth." (Film Journal Int’l.)

“ IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON Even if you know the story of the Apollo space program, David Sington’s stirring documentary restores the thrill, the terror and the heroism of man hurling himself into the unknown. In part, that’s because the archival footage (much of it unseen and/or synched up with sound for the first time) is of astonishing quality, capturing the you-are-there-in-space effect Tom Wolfe strove for so mightily in The Right Stuff. The wide-eyed, square-jawed kid brother of the Manhattan Project’s atom-age skullduggery, the U.S. space program was the smiling face of technocratic Cold War rivalry: tug-of-war as opposed to the nuclear Stratego being played off the Florida coast. In the Shadow of the Moon swiftly sketches the speed-up of the space race: Yuri Gagarin’s preemptive flight in 1961, followed by Alan Shepard’s orbital journey a month later, and JFK’s challenge to seize the lead. But better still are the humble, wonder-struck reminiscences of Apollo astronauts such as James Lovell, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins, contrasted today with their youthful rocket-jockey selves. Even as the movie laments a lost era when scientific exploration still had the romance of discovery, it brings that dashing spirit back with a rush. Need a pick-me-up after the bitter foreign-policy failures reported in Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight? Here’s every nation on Earth — even the pouting Soviets — fixed on the comet of can-do U.S. optimism streaking into the stars. Even the French loved us then. In the Shadow of the Moon recalls the wondrous moment when America had the entire world looking up, up, and not away. Essential viewing for any stargazer, then or now. (Jim Ridley, L.A. Weekly)