Yesterday we were in America

Mike Christie has just completed the drama documentary Yesterday We Were In America

 

The film tells the story of Alcock and Brown, the story of two British underdogs who made the world smaller overnight.

Every now and then humanity reaches a milestone. Something erupts in the heart of men and they are overcome by an irresistible urge to overcome nature.

Thirty years before Everest was conquered, that impulse was building in the minds of two British prisoners of war as they languished in two different enemy jails. 

As the dust settled on the First World War they joined the race to be the first to fly non-stop across the Atlantic. The prize was offered by the first press baron frustrated at the sluggishness of the British government to join the aviation race with any vigour. The Americans, the French and worryingly the Germans had all demonstrated a greater zeal to develop the fledging business of flying.

This is the story of the chance meeting and unlikely success story of those two Brits - Jack Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, pilot and navigator of the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic.

The risks were immense, the prospect of success remote. The pair only met 2 months before the historic flight. Their plane arrived at the starting line in pieces by sea after their competitors had taken off - and once airborne they were left with nothing but their wits and sheer physical strength as their plane was buffeted by the yet uncharted air currents above the most treacherous ocean for aviators in the world.

Pieced together from log books, diaries and contemporary reports this drama documentary captures the extraordinary achievement against all odds that opened the way for commercial aviation and helped bring Britain and America closer together.

Alcock and Brown were greeted as heroes after they reached land in Ireland and won the prize. Their competitors had been beaten by the rank outsiders. Knighthoods for both followed. But within a year , tragedy followed...

A timely film which tells the story of town men, their relationship on that fateful flight and how it changed the way we see the world. A story ripe for exploring at a moment when for the first time since Alcock and Brown's death defying achievement we are rethinking how - and how much - we should all around the world.

Shot in High Definition, on location in Newfoundland, Ireland and Great Britain in the summer of 2008. Directed by Mike Christie, Produced by Caroline Page, Executive Producer Mike Smith.

Yesterday We Were In America is a co-production with Aquarius Documentaries.