Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Dish is a 2000 Australian historical comedy-drama film about the Parkes Radio Telescope's role in relaying live television footage of the Apollo 11 moonwalk in 1969. The film follows the dish's staff as they deal with a power failure, a cover-up, and dangerously high winds on the night Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon.
The Dish was directed by Rob Sitch and written by Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy, and Rob Sitch.
The Dish earned $17,999,473 at the Australian box office and was the top-grossing Australian film in Australia in 2000. Its four-day opening weekend grossed $2.98 million from 281 screens, a record for an Australian film at the time.
The film takes significant liberties with history. Neil Armstrong's first step was received by NASA's Honeysuckle Creek antenna near Canberra, not by Parkes; Parkes's signal was used eight and a half minutes after the moonwalk began. No power failure occurred at the real Parkes station, and Prime Minister John Gorton visited Honeysuckle Creek that night, not Parkes. The high winds are historically accurate: the real dish operated in gusts reaching 110 km/h (59 knots).
The Dish holds a 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 99 reviews, with an average score of 7.4 out of 10. The site's critics consensus describes it as a feel-good movie without an abundance of mush.
Most of the radio telescope scenes were filmed at the real Parkes Observatory. The majority of the remaining scenes were shot in Forbes, a town 33 km south of Parkes, chosen for its historic buildings. Additional filming took place at Old Parliament House in Canberra and Crawford Studios in Melbourne.