IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON!

Above: In 1961, President John F. Kennedy declared that the United States would land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. Below: Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan salutes the flag the Moon in December 1972 in the new documentary debut at The Sundance Film Festival "In the Shadow of the Moon".

___

This weekend at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, New York after an enthusiastic review upon it's initial release in Los Angeles and other select cities, "In the Shadow of the Moon" features interviews with 10 of the 12 surviving members of the NASA Apollo Moon mission program. Missing is a man whom I consider a mentor and friend, Lt. Col. Frank Borman, Commander of Apollo 8 and the notoriously media-shy Neil Armstrong--the first man to walk on the Moon. From all accounts, however, the film documentary opens with President John F. Kennedy's stirring February 1961 speech, where he declares that by the end of the 1960's the United States fledgling NASA space program would land a man on the Moon. It is absolutely tragic that President Kennedy's life was taken before he had a chance to see the successful outcome of his dream. British filmmaker David Sington's archival footage of President Kennedy's address is important to instill context because roughly half of the world's 6 billion people were not born when the "Project Apollo" program (deploying 3 Astronauts) was launched. Apollo followed "Project Gemini" (a 2 Astronaut Spacecraft) and before that, NASA's inception program "Project Mercury" (carrying a single Astronaut). Present in sit-down interviews are the now-white-haired Astronauts who once sported crew cuts and the patriotic dedication to "the mission" during one of the most turbulent and chaotic social periods our country has ever experienced--the 1960's. The Astronauts featured in the film include: Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, Gene Cernan, Mike Collins, Charlie Duke, Jim Lovell, Edgar Mitchell, Harrison Schmitt, Dave Scott, and John Young. From desegregation, the Vietnam War, the assassination of President Kennedy (1963), passage of The Voting Rights Act (1965), the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King (April, 1968) and President Kennedy's brother and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (June, 1968), mass rioting across America, and Woodstock (1969), this film sounds like a "must-see" for everyone. But particularly for those of us who need to "catch up" and see where we once were as a country. "For some, it's a nostalgia trip," said 48-year-old Director Sington. "They love it because it takes them back to their childhoods. And then there's a whole new generation who've been raised solely on fictional space adventure like 'Star Wars' who see real spacecraft for the first time orbiting the moon and they're just blown away." If you catch this film, ENJOY!