Our next movie night takes us to the Moon via an Australian sheep station! Well, sort of ….
In July 1969, the 64-meter (210 foot) Murriyang radio telescope dish at isolated Parkes Observatory in Australia was the primary receiver in the southern hemisphere for live television signals from Apollo 11. The Australian comedy-drama film The Dish,
released in 2000, tells the story of the role the observatory, its staff, and the nearby town of Parkes played in enabling the worldwide broadcast of the first Moon landing mission.
The quirky characters in the movie are fictional and some historic details were tweaked or manufactured for dramatic or humorous effect, but most of the story is true, the control room set was absolutely authentic, and much of the movie was shot on location at the dish, although the quaint architecture of the small town of Forbes stood in for Parkes.
Sam Neill stars, with Patrick Warburton, Tom Long, and Kevin Harrington. The film has a “96% Fresh” approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s rated PG-13 and has a run time of 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Come to our Chapter House Theater for the 7:00 PM show on Friday, August 1, 2025. See if you can figure out which story details were real and which were created in the script!