Moonwalk One

Moonwalk One
2007 release cover
Directed by	Theo Kamecke
Produced by	Francis Thompson Inc. Peretz W. Johnnes
Written by	Theo Kamecke Peretz Johnnes E.G.Valens
Starring	Neil Armstrong Michael Collins Buzz Aldrin
Narrated by	Laurence Luckinbill
Music by	Charles Morrow
Cinematography	Urs Furrer Hideaki Kobayshi
Edited by	Pat Powell Richard Rice Theo Kamecke
Distributed by	NASA
Running time	96 minutes (1971 release) 106 minutes (2009 release)
Country	United States
Language	English

Moonwalk One is a feature-length documentary film about the flight of Apollo 11, which landed the first humans on the moon. Besides portraying the massive technological achievement of that event, the film places it in some historical context, and tries to capture the mood and feel of the people on Earth at the time when man first walked on another world.

After the film was completed in 1969 there was not much interest in it because the general public had been saturated with the US space program, especially with several other lunar missions which followed Apollo 11 over the next three years. NASA gave the film a screening in New York City for possible distributors, but it was considered to be too long, and subsequently failed to be picked up. To counter this lack of interest about 15 minutes was cut from the finished film at NASA’s direction. This failed to gain renewed interest from distributors, but the film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in the summer of 1971, where it won a special award and was described as a “sleeper”. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York began a new film series called “New American Directors”, and Moonwalk One was placed in its first program. It received many favorable reviews and was thereafter screened in a selection of theaters nationally, capitalizing on the publicity due to the Whitney program.

For the next few decades Moonwalk One was practically forgotten; even the original printing elements were lost by NASA or Technicolor. All that survived were a few 16mm copies of the cut-down version, from which some DVDs were subsequently made.

In 2007 a group of film makers were researching film footage known to have originated with Moonwalk One for a film about the overall Apollo program called In the Shadow of the Moon. One of the producers, Christopher Riley, tracked down the director Theo Kamecke for help with his questions, only to find that Kamecke still had two large steel shipping boxes containing the only 35mm print of the original film, sitting under his desk. Over the next two years a consortium was put together to digitally restore the 35mm print and re-release this director's cut on DVD in time for the 40th anniversary of the first walk on the moon. The DVD includes a director’s commentary, the story of the making of the film and other features. Discovery Channel in the UK also acquired this version and transmitted it with additional material featuring producer Christopher Riley, first premiering on Monday July 20, 2009.