What new dimension does the directors cut of Moonwalk One add to the first moon landing story?
Chris Riley: When Moonwalk One was released in 1970, the film was about 112 minutes in length, which Nasa believed at the time to be long. So they cut the film by 15 minutes and released a 96-minute version instead. Nasa essentially commissioned director Theo Kamecke to produce a “time capsule” rather than a straight-cut documentary. By the time the film was released, the general public had become saturated with coverage of human missions to the moon and the project struggled to attract any distributors, although it did receive some television play in 1974 for Apollo 11’s fifth anniversary. Theo therefore made a film that encapsulated what it meant to be a human being living on earth at that moment of history during the summer of 1969. Although the spine of the story is the first landing on the moon, the film has a much more profound and timely context, incorporating other extraordinary feats of humanity such as Stonehenge. AH: Theo said he tried to capture the mood and feelings on ear
