Access your watchlist and rate films with your MyPicturehouse online account
Not a MyPicturehouse Member ?
Become a memberWe are delighted to welcome Eileen Collins to Picturehouse for a live Q&A following these special screenings. Astronaut Eileen Collins was the first woman to pilot and command an American spacecraft. Born on the other side of the tracks in upstate New York, she smashed many glass ceilings in the US Air Force and at NASA in her career, culminating in four increasingly dramatic and dangerous space shuttle missions. With an incredible set of archival materials, intimate interviews, and a moving score by Marcelo Zarvos, Hannah Berryman’s nail-biting film shares the emotional journey experienced by Eileen’s family, and explores what level of risk is acceptable in human endeavour. Spacewoman is a film about the first woman to pilot then command a space shuttle - not just ride on the shuttle, as a scientist, but actually pilot and then command its crew, responsibilities that were until this point totally reserved for men. Not only did she manage to carve out a space for herself in this world, she did it from the most unlikely of backgrounds. She grew up in Elmira, a deprived area of New York State, far from the big city, with the toughest of starts - an alcoholic dad who left them struggling on food stamps, a life which took its toll on her mother too, leaving Eileen to take charge. And here’s the thing: what could have broken her made her. She could take charge, she could conquer fear too and take the risks necessary to go to space in what was, essentially, a dangerous and experimental vehicle. We follow Eileen’s journey through her most perilous mission of all, the return to flight after the Columbia tragedy, which she commanded, and which ran into the same problem that had destroyed Columbia. And we follow the emotional journey of her life through this, now with her own family, to find out how they dealt with Eileen's extraordinary career. The film becomes a meditation on fear and control, both physical and emotional, and on risk and human endeavour.
Welcome to your MyPicturehouse login area. If you have not logged in before please activate your card.Sign in to access your Membership information: