Lowell Lecture
The Space Race
Date & Time
Feb. 28, 2024 at 7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Location
Museum of Science
1 Science Park Boston, MA 02114
Driving Directions
Speaker(s)
Presenting Organization
Topics
Contact
SubSpace (subspace@mos.org, 617-723-2500)
The Roxbury International Film Festival and Museum of Science, Boston are proud to present a special screening of The Space Race from National Geographic Documentary Films, uncovering the little-known stories of the first Black pilots, engineers, and scientists that became astronauts.
The Space Race weaves together the stories of Black astronauts seeking to break the bonds of social injustice to reach for the stars, including Guion Bluford, Ed Dwight, and Charles Bolden, among many others. In The Space Race, directors Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (The Redeem Team) and Lisa Cortés (Little Richard: I Am Everything) profile the pioneering Black pilots, scientists, and engineers who joined NASA to serve their country in space, even as their country failed to achieve equality for them back on Earth. From 1963, when the assassination of JFK thwarted Captain Ed Dwight's quest to reach the Moon, to 2020, when the echoes of the civil unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd reached the International Space Station, the story of African Americans at NASA is a tale of world events colliding with the aspirations of uncommon men.
The bright dreams of Afrofuturism become reality in The Space Race, turning science fiction into science fact and forever redefining what "the right stuff" looks like, giving us new heroes to celebrate and a hidden history to discover.