The other day I mentioned the incredible doc Failure is Not an Option, the Apollo program as seen though the eyes of the freakishly smart Mission Control. I'd say that In the Shadow of the Moon is the perfect companion piece, as it's the same years but as told by (and ONLY by) the living Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon (except Neil Armstrong of course, which is no surprise to us.)
It's a stunning combination of
1) footage from NASA not seen for 30+ years (including below, from a camera inside part of the Saturn V falling back to Earth)
2) inside-baseball talk from the astronauts as the events were unfolding (including Buzz Aldrin pausing to take a piss before stepping on the moon), all of them still in awe of the Saturn V rocket that got them to the moon, and each realistic re: how worried they were about shit not going right.
3) incredibly intimate philosophical reflections about mankind and the Earth ("We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth. The fact that just from the distance of the Moon, you can put your thumb up, and you can hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything that you have ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself, all behind your thumb. And how insignificant we really all are") after having been on the Moon.
See the whole thing yourself, starting HERE. The subtitles are a little annoying, but it's a British doc and a lot of the astronauts had Southern accents, so.
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