MILWAUKEE — Documentarian Cristina Costantini has been inspired by pioneering astronaut Sally Ride since childhood.
In 2023, the stars aligned as she collaborated with National Geographic Documentary Films, Story Syndicate, and Muck Media to create a film exploring both the public and private aspects of Ride’s life—a side of her that many only discovered after her passing in 2012. Tam O’Shaughnessy, Ride’s partner of 27 years, steps into the spotlight in this 1 hour and 43-minute film to reveal the Sally Ride that many were unaware of.
Watch: Milwaukee native Cristina Costantini brings Sally Ride's story to the big screen
Here is an excerpt from a conversation that Milwaukee Tonight host Shannon Sims had with Costantini in the very theater where she grew up watching documentaries—the Oriental Theater.
Shannon: "Cristina, having come off a successful run at Sundance to come home to open the film festival. How does it feel? "
Cristina: "This means the world to me to be here, to be in this theater, this is where I grew up, seeing all of the films that made me want to be a filmmaker. So it's really a homecoming for me."
Shannon: "What drew you to this story ?"
Cristina: " I've been a huge fan of Sally since I was a little girl....I think it was simply, you know, seeing a woman in space jumpsuit, breaking the highest glass ceiling. There was something just symbolic and powerful to me. If she could do it, I'm a girl, maybe I can do big things too. I went to Golda Meir Elementary, and if you drive by on Martin Luther King, You can see there is a there's a little Sally Ride, looking at a shuttle. And I painted that when I was in third or fourth grade, and it's crazy that it's still there .
"I've been obsessed with her for a long time, but when she passed away in 2012, I learned with the rest of the world that she was survived by her female life partner, Tam O'Shaughnessy. And I started to think at that point, you know, wow, you know, NASA was barely ready for a woman. They definitely would not have been ready for this. What was that internal struggle? And so I started to get really interested in the more interesting story of who the true Sally Ride was."
Shannon: "What were some of the challenges in making this film, even with all of that archival video?"
Cristina: "We brought in 5000 reels from NASA, and then we had to sound sync it. All the audio was in a different building, and all the reels were in different buildings, no good system to sync them."
Shannon: "So I read that you started out as an investigative reporter. What was it about documentary filmmaking that drew you to make the transition? "
Cristina: "I was an investigative reporter at ABC and Univision, and I really that I that's where I picked up a camera. That's where I learned how to tell a story, and also all the skills that go into filmmaking. You learn making news.....I grew up watching documentaries here in this theater. And I, you know, I really see them as empathy machines. They they show us what other people's lives are like. They teach us things we could never have known, or take us to worlds we could never visit.
So I hope people you know gain empathy for this woman, Sally, and for the experiences that people who live in the shadows, or people who have had to hide something experience in their day to day."
Digital Exclusive: Tam O'Shaughnessy, Sally Ride's life partner talks about the premiere of 'Sally'
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