Hidden Figures

I do like movies about Nasa's early years in the space race The Right Stuff and the mini series From The Earth To The Moon are great and manage to incorporate the feeling and the mood of the time and the can do attitude of the early Nasa.

Hidden Figures shows you the story of some forgotten and vital figures in the space race and they were forgotten because of the colour of their skin and this film sets out to make amends.

All of the early calculations for mercury missions were carried out by "computers" not in the modern sense of a PC terminal but actual women who would check and and go over the figures using accounting machines when needed. The three women in this story were computers and they were pioneers and visionaries at the same time. One of them is a brilliant mathematician who works her way up from the computer room and into the main office for ballistic trajectory calculations. while dealing with the segregation of the south she soon rises to become the leading mathematician in the office who has to give the credit for her work to white scientist. The next computer heads to the engineering department and pioneers a trail to become an engineer when the system is against her, her speech in the court room is one of the best pieces of cinema in my opinion. The third and last woman while being past over for promotion continually takes the time to learn the programming language Fortran in her own time and teaches it to the other "coloured computers" and before long she's replaced the IBM team that built the computer using her depth of learning.

This is a great film with some good moments highlighting the struggle to end race segregation and how these women worked through the adversities to do their part for their country in the space race. There are some funny moments that highlight these trials in a light hearted way but still bring home the point to us the watching audience.

If you like the space program and want to see it from a different perspective then you should go and see this, if you're after a story of how equality was fought for then this is a bit tame and only gives you a feeling of the time and not the full story but its well worth a watch and its enjoyable for everyone.