For All Mankind

The documentary cuts every flight of the Apollo programme together as a single journey. Launch, orbit, the lunar surface and the return; footage from different missions is made into one narrative. Al Reinert directed. The team went through over six million feet of film in the NASA archive to make their selection, and most of what they found had never been shown. There is no narrator. The only voices are the astronauts; Reinert laid interviews with thirteen of them over the images, and who is speaking is never identified. The music is by Brian Eno. The piece called An Ending spread through this film and became bound to images of space. The film's choice is to avoid technical exposition entirely: no numbers, no dates, no mission designations. The aim is to convey what being there was like. It was nominated for the documentary feature Oscar. Who it is for: viewers who like space history and image-driven documentary. Who it is not for: anyone after information; the film deliberately teaches nothing.