NYFF51: Saturday Unleashes Premieres, Red Carpets and Convergence

Brian Brooks – 9.29.2013

After the World Premiere of Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips, the New York Film Festival began its first full day of screenings: Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises, Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez’s Manakamana, Frederick Wiseman’s At Berkeley, Nadav Schirman’s  In The Dark Room, Zhangke Jia’s A Touch of Sin, Joaquim Pinto’sWhat Now, Remind Me?, Mitra Farahani’s Fifi Howls from Happiness and, of course, the Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis. NYFF Convergence  also kicked off its weekend of technology and storytelling in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

A sell-out crowd packed the Elinor Bunin Munroe for the NYFF Convergence screening of aircraft emergency feature Charlie Victor Romeo. Originally produced as a stage play in the Lower East Side, the compilation of stories are recreated entirety from black box recordings of true airline emergencies. Charlie Victor Romeopresents a “visceral experience that stays with audiences long after credits roll.” The play was a hit not only with audiences, but with the Department of Defense, which gave money to the production because it served as a training tool for its pilots.

“Something amazing about the field of aviation is that it’s willing to look at itself and criticize itself,” said Robert Berger, who co-directed the film version of Charlie Victor Romeo with Patrick Daniels and Karlyn Michelson. “That is a model for the rest of the world.” Throughout the film, the audience is placed in the cockpit with the pilots as they traverse various emergencies. It is tense and even more jarring considering it is not fiction. “If you’re an actor, nothing gets you in the moment more than having those alarms sound,” said one thespian who played in Charlie Victor Romeo. “The objective is clear. You want to land that plane.”

Posted by New York Film Festival 2013