Cosmic birth is a 2019 documentary film about mankind’s journey to the Moon and the role that Iceland played in the training of the Apollo astronauts. The film is written by Orly Orlyson, founder and director of the Exploration Museum in Húsavík, a village on Iceland’s north coast facing the Arctic ocean with musician and filmmaker Rafnar Orri Gunnarsson. They co-direct the film.
“When you are born out of your mother, that’s when love begins to appear. Up until that point, you are simply dependent on your mother and have no knowledge of your mother, but once you come outside, now you see your mother for who see is.” – Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart in Cosmic Birth
The Apollo astronauts were sent to the north of Iceland in 1965 and 1967 for geology field training, to better prepare them for their work on the surface of the Moon. Through his work at the Exploration Museum, Orly has become friends with many of the Apollo moonwalkers and their families, as well as many of the people who worked behind the scenes to make this ancient dream of going to the moon a reality in 1969. He tells the story from a human prospective, focusing less on the techincal achivement and more on the human achivement of going to the moon. Orly has teamed up with Icelandic musician and filmmaker rafnar to tell this story. The fillm tells of how the trips to the moon changed those 12 men who went there, and even more importantly how these men took an entire species to another world, changing our whole understanding of our place in the universe.
The story is told through interviews with 5 of the Apollo astronauts, Walt Cunningham, Bill Anders, Rusty, Charlie Duke, and Harrison Schmitt, as well as Mark Armstrong, son of Neil Armstrong, and Richard Garriott, somn of Owen Garriott.
The story is also told through visuals and an original score composed for the film by Andri Freyr Arnarsson, Óskar Andri Ólafsson with rafnar.
“Tickets for theater screenings in Iceland will be made available free of charge from July 16 at cosmicbirth.org. The film will screen free of charge in theaters in Iceland and air on TV in Iceland at the same time om , 50 years to the minute after Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar surface, July 20, 2019 at 20:17.,” says Friðrik Sigurðsson, co-producer of Cosmic Birth. “We look at his film as Iceland’s contribution to celebrating the greatest achievement of mankind, going to another world.”
Cosmic Birth will screen in selected theaters from October 2019. Screenings are confirmed in Denver, CO, San Diego, CA, New York, NY, Oslo, Norway and London, UK. A complete list of screenings will be posted to the website by July 20.