For All Mankind chronicles the NASA Apollo program beginning with Apollo 8 in 1968, the first manned mission into space by the United States.
The 1989 documentary was directed by Al Reinert who has won numerous awards for his documentaries. He also co-wrote the screenplay for the 1995 space movie by Ron Howard Apollo 13. For All Mankind uses plenty of archive footage to tell the story which has been appropriately intertwined with music from Brian Eno. While there is a lot of focus on the technical achievements the film also shows us how travelling to the moon changed the way we looked at Earth forever, using amazing footage taken hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth.
To provide narration over the missions, For All Mankind features astronauts who were apart of Apollo such as Jim Lovell and Michael Collins. Collins stayed in the orbiting Lunar module when Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969. So this documentary provides a unique account of Apollo which couldn't really have been told by anyone else.
