‘People didn’t like women in space’: how Sally Ride made history and paid the price

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Ride was the first US woman in space – but a National Geographic documentary looks at how she was forced to hide her queerness to succeed A week before Sally – a documentary about the first American woman to fly into space – landed at the Sundance film festival in January, Nasa employees received emails informing them how Donald Trump’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) rollbacks would take effect. Contracts and offices associated with DEI programs were to be terminated. Staff were given Orwellian instruction to inform the government of any attempt to disguise inclusion efforts in “coded or imprecise language”. In the weeks to follow, Nasa would take back its promise to send the first woman and person of color to the moon’s surface. Meanwhile, employees are reported to be hiding their rainbow flags and any other expressions of solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community, allegedly because they were instructed to do so though Nasa denies those claims. Continue reading... from Film |...
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Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story review – life story of America’s healthcare saviour

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From British private school outcast to anaconda-wrestling cowboy to philanthropist, Paul Michael Angell’s documentary is of a life less ordinary

As unbelievable life trajectories go, British private school outcast to South American cowboy to US primetime TV naturalist to American healthcare saviour must be up there with the weirder ones. The late philanthropist Stan Brock singlehandedly disproves the old F Scott Fitzgerald dictate about American second acts by – starting in 1985 – supplying free medical treatment to millions of uninsured people through his non-profit Remote Area Medical (RAM). Related in this documentary with flashes of Boy’s Own brio, this flip into altruism is all the more remarkable in light of Brock’s borderline-abusive upbringing that pushed him as a young man into a stony self-reliance.

Even in his 70s and ushering in-need citizens into RAM’s mobile clinics, Brock still cuts a strapping, athletic figure. In his heyday, droving on the world’s largest cattle ranch and wrestling anacondas on the savannah of then-British Guiana, he looks like something out of an H Rider Haggard novel. This was the brawny package that made for TV gold as a co-host for 1960s series Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and, briefly, an action movie star in schlock such as 1976’s Escape from Angola.

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