Living in the Age of Airplanes, a National Geographic documentary, will open in big-screen theaters across the country this weekend. The film, narrated by Harrison Ford, aims to celebrate “how the airplane has enriched our lives,” director Brian Terwilliger told AVweb. Set in 95 locations spanning 18 countries and all 7 continents, the film has been six years in the making. “I definitely think pilots are going to enjoy the film,” Terwilliger said. NASA has developed an educational resource guide to accompany the film, available as a PDF. Most of the initial venues are science museum theaters, but the promoters say new sites will continue to be added “throughout 2015 and beyond.” The film also will be shown at the fly-in theater at EAA AirVenture, in Oshkosh, on Sunday July 19.
Another aviation film now on the festival circuit is Above and Beyond, which tells the story of a group of Jewish-American pilots who secretly smuggled airplanes out of the U.S. and learned to fly so they could fight for Israel in 1948. The pilots “turned the tide of the war,” according to the film’s website, and also “embarked on personal journeys of discovery.” Also getting a lot of media attention this week is Skyfaring, a memoir by Mark Vanhoenacker, who flies 747s for British Airways. The new book has a long list of rave reviews: “[An] ode to the wonder of flight in the tradition of the great pioneer pilot-author Antoine de Saint Exupry and Charles Lindbergh,” said the [London] Times. “Flying remains a magical business, Vanhoenacker makes clear … a riveting practitioner’s account.”
