THE SPACE RACE key art | ©2024 National Geographic
Directors Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza came together to direct and produce THE SPACE RACE, now streaming on both National Geographic and Disney+. This is the first time the filmmakers have collaborated.
Separately, Cortés won an Emmy for the documentary THE APOLLO. Cortés’s other credits include ALL IN: THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY, THE REMIX: HIP HOP X FASHION and LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING. Hurtado de Mendoza has made documentaries including BRANDING KOSOVO and THE PEOPLE’S FIGHTERS: TEOFILO STEVENSON AND THE LEGEND OF CUBAN BOXING.
Jointly Hurtado de Mendoza and Cortés have already won three awards for THE SPACE RACE, with more very likely to come.
“Space brought us together,” Cortés says with a laugh.
“It’s in our destiny,” Hurtado de Mendoza agrees.
“We both have had incredible careers as filmmakers,” Cortés elaborates, “and just fell in love with this project.”
THE SPACE RACE chronicles the history of Black astronauts in NASA. These include now ninety-year-old Ed Dwight, who was going to be the first Black astronaut in space until racism and assassination destroyed his trajectory.
Hurtado de Mendoza says THE SPACE RACE came about while he and executive producer Frank Marshall were in Cuba, working on THE PEOPLE’S FIGHTERS. “We found these images in the 1980s, in the National Film Archives of Cuba. It looked like astronauts. So, the first question was, why were the Cubans promoting anything American during the Cold War? It didn’t make much sense.
“The locals said, ‘No, what are you talking about? That’s our national hero. That’s a Cuban cosmonaut.’ And so, we found out that [Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez], the first Black astronaut, was actually a Cuban who was the first Latino and the first person of color to fly in space. And so, the Soviets had scored the so-called first [in] that particular race to space. And we wondered, how could it be that the U.S. lost that race? What was going on in the U.S. at the time? And that really got us curious about the American stories.”
NASA astronaut Leland Melvin is one of THE SPACE RACE’s executive producers. Cortés explains, “Our production company that we worked with, Kennedy/Marshall, Diego and myself spoke, and felt it would be incredible for Leland Melvin to join us as our executive producer. It was one of the best decisions we made, because obviously, he has relationships with all of our participants, and was such a great ambassador for sharing with them our vision, and getting them to come on board was a piece of cake.”
What intrigued Hurtado de Mendoza and Cortés about space exploration prior to THE SPACE RACE?
For Cortés, “I was interested in science, but I also was fascinated by science fiction, and what science fiction presented as possibilities for all kinds of people to live and create great change – and battle ferocious aliens,” she adds with a laugh.
Hurtado de Mendoza elaborates, “Also, I think for us as filmmakers, Lisa and I, we’re really passionate about telling stories that haven’t been told that we think people should know about. And in this case, beyond the science and the astronauts, we’re using stories of a whole universe of hidden figures that we think people will fall in love with, and they might have never heard of them. And the question is, after every screening, people come up to us and say, ‘How could it be that I didn’t know anything about these stories or these people?’ And that’s exactly what we want people to feel.”
Speaking of hidden figures, there is a film of that title about the Black women involved in the space program during the 1960s. However, THE SPACE RACE doesn’t include them. This is because, Cortés relates, “Our thesis is really to look at the story of Ed Dwight, and how he propels a whole generation and legacy and community that followed him. And it’s really focused on astronauts. Ladies like Katherine Johnson of HIDDEN FIGURES are mathematicians. This really is about changing the idea of who has the ‘right stuff’ [which NASA felt in the 1960s were white men of a certain background, age and height], and how African-American astronauts were a part of that change, of expanding the program, and also for our present-day participants.”
Prior to THE SPACE RACE, did either or both of the filmmakers wonder about when Black astronauts became part of NASA?
Hurtado de Mendoza believes that “most people might have heard of Guion Bluford, who became, in 1983, the first African-American to fly in space. That’s probably what most people know. And you discover in this film is that there is an exciting, vibrant community that you never heard about, and it includes people who were trained in the 1960s during the height of the civil rights movement. You’re going to discover stories that I think will keep people on the edge of their seats, and will discover the richness of the history that they don’t know. And they’re up for a thrill. It’s an exciting film. It’s way more than people I think expect.”
Cortés points out, “It’s a twenty-year journey from Ed Dwight to Guion Bluford. During that time, America goes through tremendous change. You have to remember, when Ed Dwight goes into the [space] program, neither the Voting Rights Act or the Civil Rights Act had been signed. And then there’s the actual moon Apollo journey. But subsequently, there’s cultural change that is happening, not only in terms of progress for African-Americans, but for women, for feminism. So, by the time we get to Guion Bluford in 1983, the American landscape looks very different in terms of progress and access. It is a very slow march for the arc of justice and progress.
“Ed Dwight was placed into a situation where he didn’t have support. I’m very lucky as a filmmaker to have a great collaborator in Diego, an incredible team at National Geographic, and also at Kennedy/Marshall, and indeed, we were always aligned on the importance of this story, not only talking about the past, but the contemporary astronauts. I always look at Ed’s life as this person in the wilderness.”
THE SPACE RACE presents facts, not opinions, Cortés notes. “It’s incredibly well-researched, and we have the receipts. We have the receipts with Ed Dwight, we have the history, we have the support of NASA with this film. And so, I think even though it’s a narrative that’s been omitted [until now from public discourse], it’s a narrative that is important for everyone to know about.”
Despite being shown in a bad light in its early history in regard to racial issues, NASA had no hesitation about participating in THE SPACE RACE, the filmmakers agree.
“We realize that the world is at a point where I think everyone is really interested in and invested in and looking back at our past,” Hurtado de Mendoza says, “and filling in those gaps, the omissions that have existed, and telling a much richer story that makes us understand much better where we are today.”
Cortés adds, “NASA was incredibly generous in giving us access not only to archives, but also to active astronauts. For us to have them in our film really speaks to so much of what we [were given], because typically, active astronauts are in training, and they field literally a hundred press requests a day. But everyone understood the importance of engaging in this history while so many of our participants are still alive and with us.”
The response to THE SPACE RACE by its participants, NASA personnel and the general public has been extraordinary, Hurtado de Mendoza relates. “We’ve had the opportunity to screen the film multiple times with NASA staff, and we were invited to Houston Space Center. We had a phenomenal screening, and they love the film as well. It portrays a real history that people just didn’t know. We’ve had experts, we’ve had astronauts in the audience, and all of them come after the film and say, ‘I’m incredibly amazed that I didn’t know these stories.’ And they are part of NASA. So, I think they are trying to include more of that history that wasn’t known.”
Cortés concurs. “When we screened at Johnson Space Center [at Houston], it was really cool. Victor [Glover] brought his Artemis team [scheduled to go to the moon in 2025] to the screening.”
Asked to describe the division of labor between himself and Cortés, Hurtado de Mendoza replies, “I think we look at how the astronauts work, and we try to mimic them. I mean, it’s the best team in the world, these astronauts working in space, doing the most difficult thing that humanity is doing, advancing our knowledge. They feed off each other, and that’s exactly how Lisa and I try to work. Communication is so important. In literally thousands of hours of conversation, we talked about everything, and it’s creating a safe space, an environment that fosters creativity. And that’s really what we were after. There’s no way to divide the work – ‘You do this, you do that.’ Lisa is incredibly talented, and we just constantly thought about the best way to help these astronauts tell their own stories.”
Cortés feels, “Both of us brought our previous experience on other projects to a shared vision. To tell a film of this complexity, we have to be in lock-step together. And so, preparing for interviews, and doing interviews, and finding great ways to film our participants was something that we spent a lot of time working on.”
In terms of research, Cortés relates, “For the U.S., our whole team worked to identify the periods and particular seminal moments in our stories that we needed archival for, and then we had to source the Arnaldo footage from other places.”
“We looked everywhere,” Hurtado de Mendoza says. “We used archives from all over the world. We ended up collecting thousands of hours of archival, and really it was daunting for us, but we had a great team that helped us comb through that immense amount of material.”
If John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated, Cortés thinks, “We all feel that Mr. Dwight, himself included, would say [Dwight] could have gone to the moon. Not only could have gone to the moon, but just as the mere fact to see an African-American man in 1963 as an astronaut at a time where there are stifling racist stereotypical tropes that are poisoning people’s perspectives about people of color, to see a Black man as one of our national heroes could have contributed to [accelerate] the very slow progress that our country was making at that time in terms of getting equal rights in access on all fronts to African-Americans.”
And it’s still an issue in 2024, Cortés adds. “I think civil rights is still something that is moving forward. We haven’t reached full access for everyone.”
In terms of plans for future projects, Cortés discloses, “It’s not the primary one, but Diego and I really love the story of Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez. There’s so much more to tell. Amd we look at other areas in other parts of the world that have intriguing and exciting characters for us to spend time with.”
What would the filmmakers most like viewers to know about THE SPACE RACE?
For Cortés, “This is an exciting, fun film, with great music, and it’s inspirational, it’s revelatory, and it’s really about the past in conversation with the present.”
For Hurtado de Mendoza, “THE SPACE RACE is a film that I think is going to have universal resonance. NASA chooses every astronaut from eighteen thousand candidates, we heard, so you’re going to see the most incredible human beings doing the most incredible things for the betterment of humankind, and people are not going to believe they didn’t know these stories.
“I think as filmmakers, what we do is, rather than look at it as a space film, we end up using space as a lens to look at humans. So, it’s our curiosity that drives us in multiple directions. this happens to be space, but what you will discover is the story of humans that are absolutely incredible. This just happens to be extra cool, because we have astronauts.”
This interview was conducted during National Geographic’s portion of the Winter 2024 Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, California.
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