On this day in movie history - Contact (1997)

Contact

directed by Robert Zemeckis,

written by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg,

based on the novel by Carl Sagan,

was released in the United States on July 11, 1997.

Music by Alan Silvestri.

Cast:

Jodie Foster, Jena Malone, Matthew McConaughey, David Morse, Tom Skerritt, James Woods, John Hurt, William Fichtner, Angela Bassett, Jake Busey, Rob Lowe, Geoffrey Blake, Max Martini, Steven Ford, Jay Leno, Larry King, Ann Druyan.

Carl Sagan, on imagination:

 

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were.
But without it, we go nowhere.
- Carl Sagan.

Carl Sagan, on books and writing:

 

What an astonishing thing a book is.

It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.

But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.

Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions,
binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs.

Books break the shackles of time.

A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
 
- Carl Sagan.

Born on this day – Carl Sagan:

Astronomer

Planetary scientist

Cosmologist

Astrophysicist

Astrobiologist

Writer

November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996

Credits:

Books:

Contact (1985); Intelligent Life in the Universe (1966); Planets (1966); The Cosmic Connection (1973); Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (1974); Other Worlds (1975); Dragons of Eden (1977); Broca's Brain (1979); Cosmos (1980); Murmurs of Earth (1983); The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War (1984); Comet (1985); Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1992); Pale Blue Dot (1994); The Demon-Haunted World (1995); Billions & Billions (1997); The Varieties of Scientific Experience (2006); The New Solar System (1981); The Eloquent Essay (2000).

 

Movies and television:

Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020); Star Stuff: A Story of Carl Sagan (2015); Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014); FanGirl Academy: 101 (2014); Pale Blue Dot (2009); Contact (1997); The Earth Day Special (1990); Cosmos (1980); Voyager Golden Record (1977).