Excerpts from reviews on the film’s release 1978-1979:
“A film to set you soaring.” Media and Methods magazine 1979
Oscar nomination screening review LA Times by Charles Champlin: “The Condor, a frail, wide-ranged beauty of mylar and string and aluminum pipe, with its bicycle-pedaled propeller, looks unlikely to move, let alone lift off, but it does at last – to thunderous applause from the theater viewers. …(The) film itself shows remarkable tenacity, requiring hours of stand-by at remote fields in the chilly dawn. The results have been smartly edited into a well-paced 27 minute narrative, with a useful and unforced voice-over. After one crash, the Condor is carried off tenderly by many hands, exactly like a great wounded bird. …It is, to coin a phrase, wonder uplifting, cheering and amusing.” Los Angeles Times Movie review, March 20, 1979
Review from the American Library Association: “From a flight of fancy to a magnificent obsession, the creation, evolution, and successful flight of a human-powered aircraft are detailed in this absorbing production that closely follows the wavering course of the GOSSAMER CONDOR and the resolute perseverance of its inventor, Paul MacCready. Creating a wonderful sense of immediacy and fascinated involvement, controlled and elucidating footage is effectively structured to record both the aeronautical developments and modifications and the human ingenuity and determination portrayed in numerous dawn-to-dusk test flights, yawning late-night design conferences, and catastrophic mishaps and minute triumphs as MacCready attempts to snare the prize in an English sponsored contest. …the concluding sight of MacCready’s prizewinning aircraft proudly displayed·in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum evokes a contented smile from the viewer, who has become part of this historic effort. …will be an enthralling addition to programs on the history of flight.” American Library Association Booklist, May 1979
FILM REVIEW 2007
Wall Street Journal Film Critic Joe Morgenstern DVD TIP 2007: Documentaries don’t have to be feature-length to tell epic tales. Three decades ago “The Flight of the Gossamer Condor,” a 27-minute film directed by Ben Shedd, won a richly deserved Oscar for its thrilling account of how the California inventor and scientist Paul B. MacCready built the first aircraft to fulfill the dream of human-powered flight. (It was powered by a bicycle racer pedaling furiously inside a Mylar-shrouded cockpit.)
MacCready died earlier this week after a long and illustrious career. Until last week the film that celebrates him was available, if at all, only as an out-of-print VHS tape through collectors or online auctions. But now the Condor flies again in a 30th anniversary DVD that’s being sold online at www.gossamercondor.com. The disc is resplendent, thanks to digital remastering in HD (a rejuvenation that has wisely left traces of the imperfections that characterize all films of a certain age). Yet its essential brilliance lies in the inventiveness of MacCready and his team, in their eagerness to learn from successive failures, and in the broad-winged Condor itself, a thing of fragile beauty but a timeless monument to the man who made the dream a reality. [Copyright Wall Street Journal/DowJones 2007]
The DVD had its world premiere on August 23, 2007, the 30th anniversary of the Gossamer Condor’s landmark flight into aviation history. The Academy’s 16mm Restoration print was made by Joe Linder at the Academy Film Archives from the 30 year old original 16mm printing masters and was shown in Los Angeles on September 24, 2007 at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater as part of the Academy’s Oscar Documentary series. The DVD was transferred from the Academy Restoration Print by David Moreno at Post Group and the DVD was made by Lightning Media and was one of the first DVDs to be packaged in recycled cardboard at LA Graphico. [Post Group is now Runway Media and with changing technology to digital distribution, both Lightning Media and LA Graphico no longer exist.]
40th+ Anniversary ProRes Digital Remaster
Port Townsend Film Festival 20 Anniversary screening of THE FLIGHT OF THE GOSSAMER CONDOR film celebrating the 40th Anniversary of receiving the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.
Thanks to the Port Townsend Film Festival for asking for a higher quality version of this movie to screen.The 2019 ProRes ReMaster is the result, looking like the movie looked when we first made it over 40 years ago. Wow!!!
40th+ Anniversary ProRes Digital Remaster Edition Producer/Director: Ben Shedd Editor: Mark Brewer Music: J Jorgensen MX Q Hannah Brewer
2020 ProRes ReMaster from Academy Film Archives 16mm Restoration Print Thanks to David Moreno, Joe Linder, Bill Putney, & Janette Force
Blog Review from Port Townsend Film Festival screening:
A BRIT GOES TO THE MOVIES IN PORT TOWNSEND 2019
“The mission of the Port Townsend Film Festival is to spark community by connecting filmmakers and audiences.’ WOW do they do it! …
[last paragraph]…. And suddenly in the middle (of the Film Festival), rather unexpectedly, the Oscar winning short of 1979: THE FLIGHT OF THE GOSSAMER CONDOR. I confess I went half-expecting a quaint piece of film-making from the past. How foolish was I! The film is still knockout, and is really an object lesson for all in how to make a movie. Impeccably judged and visually stunning, it has everything – human endeavour and excitement, heartfelt emotion, gripping suspense, clear and understandable science, at least three outright disaster moments, and a glorious finish, all beautifully realised. OK, there is no CASABLANCA runway romance, but this is documentary, and anyway I for one could not help falling in love with the plane, a creation of such eccentric and indefatigable beauty. This man-powered bird was made to soar.”