Featurette on astronaut Ed Dwight from The Space Race
National Geographic has released a featurette on astronaut Ed Dwight on the upcoming doc The Space Race, directed by Emmy Award Winner Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and Lisa Cortés. The film comes to National Geographic Channel and Disney+ in Feb 2024.
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 Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza 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 fresh history to explore.
Featured in the doc are Guion Bluford, Charles Bolden, Ed Dwight, Victor Glover, Frederick Gregory, Bernard Harris, Leland Melvin, Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, and Jessica Watkins.
The producers on the film include Alexandra Bowen, Aly Parker, Mark Monroe, Keero Birla, Lisa Cortés, and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza with Carolyn Bernstein, Frank Marshall, Leland Melvin, Tony Rosenthal serving as executive producers.