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Development of an eighty-minute documentary on the Tektite Program, an experimental underwater research station operated by NASA in the U.S. Virgin Islands between 1969 and 1970.

Tektite Revisited: NASA’s Forgotten Underwater Missions (working title) is an eighty-minute feature-length documentary that tells the story of the Tektite Program, an experimental underwater research station operated by NASA in the U.S. Virgin Islands between 1969-1970. A sensuous visual depiction of NASA’s manned spaceflight research in the Caribbean as an international “Space Race” came to a close, the film employs a vast collection of rarely-seen and newly-restored archival materials (16mm film, audio recordings, photographs, extensive government records), and revisits a series of unlikely missions led by America’s “aquanauts,” who lived underwater for weeks on end. Tektite Revisited uses the forgotten program as a case study for examining a Cold War-era cultural preoccupation with survival in extreme environments, and ultimately suggests the program’s role in a set of larger, global questions regarding humanity’s relationship to its home planet.

Project fields:
American Studies; Art History and Criticism; History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine

Program:
Media Projects Development

Division:
Public Programs

Totals:
$74,989 (approved)
$74,989 (awarded)

Grant period:
8/1/2019 – 4/30/2021