Product Description
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In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11
fulfilled President Kennedy's challenge of landing a man on the
Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No one who witnessed
the lunar landing will ever forget it. Al Reinert's documentary
for All Mankind is the story of the twenty-four men who traveled
to the Moon, told in their words, in their voices, using the
images of their experiences. Forty years later, it remains the
most radical, visually dazzling work of cinema yet made about
this earth-shaking event Director-approved special edition
features: New, restored high-definition digital transfer,
supervised and approved by producer-director Al Reinert Audio
commentary featuring Reinert and Apollo 17 commander Eugene A.
Cernan, the last man to set foot on the Moon, An Accidental Gift:
The Making of for All Mankind, a new documentary featuring
interviews with Reinert, Apollo 12 and Skylab astronaut Alan
Bean, and NASA archive spets Don Pickard, Mike Gentry,
Morris Williams, and Chuck Welch, on Camera, a collection of
excerpted, on-screen interviews with fifteen of the Apollo
astronauts, New video program about Bean's artwork, accompanied
by a gallery of his paintings, NASA audio highlights and liftoff
footage, Optional on-screen identification of astronauts and
mission control spets, Plus: A booklet featuring essays by
film critic Terrence Rafferty and Reinert.
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A Special Message from Jonathon Turell, Criterion CEO
I was nine when the Apollo 11 Eagle landed on the moon. I
remember vividly watching it on a small black-and-white TV at
away camp that summer of 1969. I’ve been hooked on the space
program ever since. Just about twenty years ago, a friend told me
he had seen a rough cut of a new space movie and I should see it.
I got a tape and watched For All Mankind for the first time. It
was unlike anything I had seen before, and I knew that I wanted
to be a part of it. I met Al Reinert and we became friends. Janus
Films helped to finish the film, and I became an associate
producer as we completed the movie. For All Mankind was nominated
for the Academy Award for Best Documentary—losing out to Common
Threads: Stories from the Quilt. It played festivals around the
world. There was a special screening for NASA and the astronauts
in Galveston, Texas, and the film showed at the Air and Space
Museum at the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the
moon landing.
We started working on the laserdisc release of For All Mankind
before the film was complete, and I traveled to Houston to meet
Al and interview Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean for inclusion on
the disc. Bean’s comments were so good that Al recut the film to
include a wonderful story about piloting the lunar module in
orbit around moon. Meeting one of the astronauts who walked on
the moon is still one of the greatest thrills of my life. Last
year, when we began working on our Blu-ray release of For All
Mankind, we got in touch with Bean again and asked him to
participate. He happily agreed to update the feature on his
paintings and also to sit down and talk with us about a subject I
had become very interested in—science versus art. I wanted to
explore the question of whether the astronauts (or the people at
NASA) realized they were shooting some of the most artistic
images ever recorded (and now some of the most famous) or if it
was really all about moon rocks and beating the Russians. This
second meeting with Bean didn’t disappoint; he says some
wonderful things that are included on the disc. When we finished
taping our interview session, he gave me a ride to lunch. The
famous Apollo 12 Corvette is gone, replaced by a truck to carry
his paintings, but that ten-minute ride will stay with me
forever. He talked about walking on the moon; I talked about what
movies I like. It didn’t seem quite parallel—for him it was an
interesting conversation, for me, it was an audience with a hero.
Over the years, I think I’ve seen every film and TV miniseries
about the Apollo program (at least twice), but for me For All
Mankind still stands apart. It is unique in its poetic approach
and ability to capture the pure emotion of the greatest journey
of our time.