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26. The Voyagers
1 year ago
22. The Commoners
2 years ago
18. Poison
2 years ago
15. Connect
3 years ago
11. The Wren
3 years ago
A short film about two small spacecraft, an epic journey, taking risks and falling in love. Also Carl Sagan.

You can read an interview with Penny Lane about this film on The Atlantic's website: theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/on-space-love-and-carl-sagans-cosmic-mix-tape/251070/

Thanks for watching! Please sign up for my mailing list to learn about my new projects! p-lane.com/contact.htm

ABOUT THE FILM //
In the summer of 1977, NASA sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 on an epic journey into interstellar space. Each spacecraft carries a golden record album, a massive compilation of images and sounds embodying the best of Planet Earth. According to Carl Sagan, “[t]he spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” While working on the golden record, Sagan met and fell madly in love with his future wife Annie Druyan. The golden record became their love letter to humankind and to each other. In the summer of 2010, I began my own hopeful voyage into the unknown. This film is a love letter to my fellow traveler.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS //
"First place," FLEX Festival • "Best Experimental Film," New Orleans Film Festival • "Honorable Mention" AFI FEST • International Film Festival Rotterdam • Festival of (in)Appropriation •  Citizen Jane • Oberhausen Festival of Short Film • DOXA Documentary Film Festival • European Media Art Festival •  Rooftop Films •  Big Sky Documentary Film Festival • European Media Art Festival • Iowa City International Documentary Festival • Directors Lounge, Berlin • Dallas Video Festival

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER //
Penny Lane has been making documentaries, animations and essay films since 2002. Her films have screened at Rotterdam, MoMA, AFI FEST, Rooftop Films, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Impakt, Images and many other venues. She has been awarded grants from Creative Capital, Cinereach, Jerome Foundation, Tribeca Film Institute, LEF Foundation, NYSCA, Experimental Television Center, IFP and the Puffin Foundation. // p-lane.com // twitter.com/#!/lennypane

She is currently in post-production on OUR NIXON, a feature length documentary compiled from the Super 8 home movies of Richard Nixon's closest White House aides. // ournixon.com // facebook.com/ournixon //
twitter.com/#!/OurNixon

Credits

Likes

  • Joshua 1 year ago
    Stunning - thank you for this - I actually wept.
  • Penny Lane plus 1 year ago
    Aw, shucks!
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  • jeanneLIOTTA 1 year ago
    The Voyager is still talking to us from outside the galaxy, via Twitter! Am sure you have read it but if not Murmurs of the Earth is the whole beautiful story from music to love to infinity. x
  • Penny Lane plus 1 year ago
    Thanks Jeanne!
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  • Shawn Bannon plus 3 months ago
    I saw your movie at AFI Film Festival. Loved it. Congrats on winning an award.
  • Penny Lane plus 3 months ago
    Thanks Shawn! I'm glad you liked it. I'm sorry to have missed the AFI screening.
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  • Sharad Patel plus 3 months ago
    Having just watched the first episode of Cosmos for the first time since grade school, and having been in high school in 1986, and about to get married myself... I'm in awe over how intimate, yet grandly powerful your metaphor is and how successfully you connect the emotional dots. That school footage is hard to think about.
  • Penny Lane plus 3 months ago
    Hello Sharad, thank you. I'm glad you were able to relate to it.
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  • Jason Sondhi staff 2 months ago
    If you can get through 5minutes of this, and watch it it in a a quiet place, without checking your email or sending a text, then this quiet, perfect, doc/personal essay will cast a spell on you.
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  • Short of the Week plus 2 months ago
    So unique and wonderful.
    +
    vimeo.com/channels/shortoftheweek
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  • Lori Calabria 2 months ago
    I've been watching Cosmos and thinking about Carl a lot lately. This doc really hit the spot.
  • Penny Lane plus 2 months ago
    Thanks Lori! Carl Sagan is an amazingly inspirational force in so many people's lives. It was my intention with this film to point out that it is a rare and wonderful person who can really convey the real beauty and power of science.
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  • Wow. Everything about this piece just put my heart into an emotive vice. Wonderful juxtaposition of courage and fear, wild love and rationality. Truly a painful yet beautiful work of art. Bravo!
  • Penny Lane plus 2 months ago
    Thank you James. I appreciate your comment and am glad you liked it!
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  • Julia Kipnis 2 months ago
    Very inspiring work!
  • Penny Lane plus 2 months ago
    Thank you Julia! :)
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  • Alex Williams plus 2 months ago
    Thank you for this beautiful film. I saw it as part of a screening at Vtape in Toronto. It made me think of, amongst other things, e.e. cumming's poem - somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond. Thanks again, and I'll look for your other work!
  • Penny Lane plus 2 months ago
    Alex, I had never read that poem but now I love it. Thank you!
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  • VoteMov 2 months ago
    nice work, i just post it to my site votemov.com if you don't mine. Cheers
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  • Erica Rogers 1 month ago
    Oh, how I wept...and wept while watching this remembrance. I miss Carl Sagan. We are not so much embarking out from our small place here in the Milky Way as we are just trying to find our way back home. We are made of star stuff, and the pull of our origins is tugging us home...ever so slowly. I hope we get back there someday. Thank you Penny Lane....thank you!
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  • MJoTurcotte 1 month ago
    Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
    Resonant.
    Great.
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  • Sir Freakman 1 month ago
    Science + Poetry = Awesomness + Pure beauty
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  • wow... beautifully translated! ~
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  • Brett Evans 1 month ago
    Hi Penny,
    a lovely love letter. I recently heard the story on NPR about Carl and Ann's relationship. I've always enjoyed his books and tv series. Your film is a wonderful tribute to the possibilities of love and life. I'll be watching your other films. Thank you.
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  • Philipp Weibel 1 month ago
    This was beautiful, thank you so much!
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  • i q 1 month ago
    Wow. holy... wow.
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  • i q 1 month ago
    This is really fricking good.
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  • Javier Chávez 1 month ago
    ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL!
    Congrats!!
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  • Ian Brander 1 month ago
    Great narrative
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  • the_______between 1 month ago
    Yes, I was in college.
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  • John Bruce 1 month ago
    I love you Penny Lane where ever you are. Really.
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  • silvercoast 1 month ago
    Wonderful, great work thanks.
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  • Justin Stokes plus 1 month ago
    Absolutely gorgeous. Thanks for this. Who did the voice-over its a lovely voice? sounds like the girl who does the VO in Into The Wild.
  • Penny Lane plus 1 month ago
    Justin, that voice is mine. I am glad you liked it! It was not easy to do, as I am not at all an actor or voiceover person or even someone who is good at reading out loud.
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  • Clifford Roddy 1 month ago
    great film. risking love can be a disaster depending upon which way you look at it. It can also bring you to your own place of being on this planet, what is our purpose etc. I think though risking an idea, as in a machine, is different from risking love, as the machine does not think of being humane as we do. Everything dies and everything is temporal as we all know. So maybe we have to find the balance somewhere that is natural and not forced. I like the way that you pulled this all together Penny.I have more questions though around love but for now maybe we have not evolved long enough yet to understand it, but merely sense it. I believe we can express it but to understand it, is entirely different. Like the guy from the united nations expressing what he/we would like but yet that is not the way of the world. If anything/body is out there then the first statement that is made is a lie. Is corporate America interested in being humbled and taught? Again Penny love the film and again it brings up questions. Which is good yeah!
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  • Omar Sobrino 1 month ago
    Very nice. I remember the gold disc. When it was made we were all living the "Moonage Daydream". Space flight was the imagination engine for generations. "My Shuttle Story" is the wonder of curiosity. Your "Voyagers" is the religion of science in that daydream period. Truly epic.
    Regards,
    Omar Sobrino
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  • Simone L Smith plus 1 month ago
    wow !!!
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  • Sasha Arfin 1 month ago
    I feel comforted by the fact that I wasn’t the only one who had tears in my eyes by the end of this film. Beautifully narrated... and composed! I love everything about this.
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  • The Lemurian Seed 1 month ago
    Funny how there's nothing aboard Voyager to suggest that we are a very violent species. Even light years away we spread our lies.
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  • Noble Guardian 1 month ago
    Nice video... deep stuff... i like it, even shed a tear...

    Thank you!
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  • Yojan Shrestha 1 month ago
    I've always loved space, now I love it even more. Thank you for this. :)
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  • MARZ plus 1 month ago
    Such great pacing. How long did you take in writing this? Was it a kind of view of life that'd you'd always held, or had always known the story of Segan and had you been amazed by space? How did this come to be?
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  • Michael Paschall 1 month ago
    so good! magnetic fields at the end was, perfect.
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  • Vinu Menon 1 month ago
    Expect the unexpected...Well narrated. I hope voyager makes a contact soon.
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  • Bazzerio 1 month ago
    Brilliant.
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  • JA Jordan 1 month ago
    Really good work
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  • JA Jordan 1 month ago
    Penny Lane What a great name
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  • Gabriel Franco plus 1 month ago
    Great work Penny!
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  • Derek Beck staff 1 month ago
    This is one of a kind.
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  • Monty Dhaliwal 1 month ago
    Penny that would give anyone hope for an eternal love. Thank you!
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  • Andy Winter 1 month ago
    That was amazing, totally reignited my love of the space programme and made me realise even more why I want to spend the rest of my life with someone!

    Who sang the song at the end, I really liked it.

    Thanks again.
  • Penny Lane plus 1 month ago
    That song is "The Book of Love" by the Magnetic Fields. It was our wedding song.
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  • Charles Huette plus 1 month ago
    I'm never going to forget this one.
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  • ZeroFacilityFilms plus 1 month ago
    Very beautiful. Very. Thanks for making this.
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  • Max Tohline 1 month ago
    A 16-minute validation, vindication, exoneration, and valediction of art, science, wonder, hope, and love. And I thought you'd never outdo The Commoners after I saw it at the Athens Film Fest a couple years back. Was I ever wrong! If you ever outdo this one, I won't have the words to praise it.

    [BTW, is that "stargate" under the end credits a stretched photograph? If so, what photo?]
  • Penny Lane plus 1 month ago
    Thanks Max, you are too nice. I don't think there's a photo under there -- I think I took the last film image (the man floating in space) and put a dorky "slit scan" effect on it for the credits. :)
  • Max Tohline 1 month ago
    Ah, that's terrific. Now that I know what to look for, I see it no problem. I wonder what Douglas Trumbull what say?
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  • Jakov Ravlić 1 month ago
    This was very intense for me, I had to brush my tears away just to see the screen. I`m fascinated by science for years now, and this movie pours all of my world views in 16 min. Thank you for making such a wonderful movie! Is there any chance of finding out the name of the song at the end? Cheers!
  • Penny Lane plus 1 month ago
    Jakov, the song is "The Book of Love" by the Magnetic Fields. I'm glad you liked it!
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  • Jon Hazell 4 weeks ago
    This is a really special film Penny, thank you.
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  • chris hanley 3 weeks ago
    this is amazing... made tear up... Carl sagan is one of my favort people... book of love is one my favorit songs... you hit a grand slam with things i like in this video... you make good art, dont stop
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  • Wesley Kirk 3 weeks ago
    Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for making this.
    I cried through the whole second half.
    This beautiful work has really struck a chord with me.
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  • Leo Bi 3 weeks ago
    A very special piece of storytelling. I cannot thank you enough for making this and sharing this with me. Oh and thank you for reminding me about my own voyage of discovery.
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  • abadrivera 3 weeks ago
    thank you penny that was wonderful.
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  • Bernardo Bordeira 3 weeks ago
    Beautifull work. I felt very relaxed watching it. It gives an interesting perspective about the voyagers and their tasks and our role in the planet earth itself. Thanks for sharing your work...
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  • Neal Sanche 3 weeks ago
    Penny, this is so inspiring. I am in love with the very thought of this.
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  • Arbor Avenue Films plus 2 weeks ago
    Nice work!
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  • Arthur Bowman 1 week ago
    I loved watching this video. I didn't join the team until 1978, as a Spacecraft Analyst (BUSS). I was a Mission Controller (ACE) for both Saturn and Jupiter encounters and correctly (initially) identified Jupiter's ring. Thanks for the memories.
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  • Gautam Valluri 5 days ago
    Bravo! Very very very well done!
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