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I’ve just been to see In the Shadow of the Moon at Eden Court tonight.

Between 1968 & 1972, twelve men voyaged to the moon & walked upon its surface. They remain the only human beings to have done so.

This documentary tells the story of those missions, in the words of the remaining astronauts as well as archive footage of John F Kennedy.

One of the best documentaries of recent times, this film has been painstakingly put together from footage that was released over a period of many years by NASA. An absolute must for anyone who has the slightest interest in space.

The photography in the film is outstanding, with amazing shots including one memorable of the Apollo spacecraft taken from the discarded faring joining it to the Saturn V booster rocket. Because it is a feature length documentary (and probably also due to the limited good footage available), it could dwell on these shots, showing them in their entirety. The film also included the full launch sequence as seen from one camera, rather than jumping between cameras as seems to be the norm. This gave a much better impression of the enormity of the undertaking of getting these men away from the Earth, and to land on another world.

Joining these together, and narrating the film, is a series of interviews with some of the men who were part of the Apollo programme. Although the reclusive Neil Armstrong doe not feature. These are interesting, and at times rather funny, but I found the camera work in these rather distracting, with soft focus close-ups of the face for most of the time.

Despite this minor annoyance, I would thoroughly recommend this film, even on the small screen the photography would be amazing.

This entry was posted on Sunday 20th January 2008 in Reviews, Science and tagged film-review, moon, Photos, planets, review, space, USofA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.