Moon Film Festival
GAZE UP AT THE MOON AND STARS at the Deckie, and get set to launch into an (inter)stellar night of film to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Apollo Moon Landing. Apollo 11 and The Dish will screen back to back for an evening of lunar love.
Interested in how the Moon landing rolled out? 2019 film Apollo 11 was crafted from newly discovered 65mm footage and more than 11,000 hours of uncatalogued audio recordings – that’s 458 days worth if you listened 24/7.
Apollo 11 looks at the people who experienced the iconic event firsthand – the astronauts, Mission Control and the millions who gathered on the ground to view history in the making. Fun fact – the film’s electronic music soundtrack was recorded on instruments available at the time of the Moon landing in 1969.
Once you’ve got your fill of history, stick around for the Australian comedy The Dish. The film, inspired by actual events, follows a group of Aussie scientists who set up a satellite dish in the middle of a sheep farm as a backup receiver for the television transmission from the Moon.
If you were lucky enough to see the landing live back in ’69, it was thanks to a bunch of Aussies who inspired The Dish. While the film spruced many elements up for dramatic effect, the Australian Telescope National Facility cleared up the most important element – sadly no one actually played cricket on the dish.
“It never happened,” the website says.
“True, the actors went up there for about an hour, but they were told where they could stand, what they could do, what they could throw – a tennis ball. So, it wasn’t a ‘stunt-double’ dish, it really was the Parkes dish they were standing on, but neither was what the film showed ‘highlights of a day’s play’.”
One last fun fact – because we at Off The Leash think Moon facts are out of this world – the division line between the light and the dark side of the moon is called the terminator line. True.
Apollo 11 - Sat 20 Jul | 7.30pm
The Dish - Sat 20 Jul | 9.30pm
Deckchair cinema | $16 | $12 Conc | $10 Memb | $35 Family | deckchaircinema.com.au
