She Should Have Gone To The Moon
2008, 58 minutes
The film tells the astonishing story of the pilot and pioneer, Jerri Truhill, who was secretly trained in 1961 to become one of the First Lady Astronauts.
She Should Have Gone To The Moon presents a uniquely personal chapter in the history of the space race. It tells the astonishing story of the pilot and pioneer, Jerri Truhill, who was trained in 1961, as part of NASA's top secret Mercury 13 programme, to become one of the First Lady Astronauts. The documentary is a lyrical journey propelled by childhood aspirations, shattered dreams and a lifelong battle against female stereotypes and male prejudice. She Should Have Gone To The Moon constructs its narrative through two journeys, both past and present. In the film, the tough talking and sharp-witted Jerri Truhill looks back on her compelling life via a phone call with the filmmaker. This conversation becomes the catalyst for the director's imagining of key events in Truhill's potent narrative and inspires a journey to meet the heroine in Texas. Along the way, the filmmaker places herself in Truhill's story, first wandering across the surreal landscape of White Sands and then suspended in zero gravity inside a water tank. Included are staged scenes, dreamt-up moments from Truhill's story, which evoke the popular melodrama of 1950s American cinema. These fictional moments bridge the gaps of time and distance between the filmmaker and her subject. Their stylised and dreamlike quality is counterpointed by shots from both Truhill's and NASA's film archive. The various strands produce the film's heady timeline, as they circle through real and imagined spaces, past and present.
