The Last Hijack

USC’s Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture, has been selected to make the Keynote Address for the 2014 NYFF Convergence, which takes place September 27-28, 2014. In addition, the festival announced the initial three selections for NYFF Convergence.

The first three selections announced for NYFF Convergence include the North American Premiere of the interactive presentation of Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting’s The Last Hijack, which combines documentary footage, animation, and an online transmedia experience to explore contemporary piracy from the point of view of a Somali man contemplating one final hijacking attempt; and a 30th Anniversary screening (of a restored 16mm print) of Diego Echeverria’s 1984 documentary Living Los Sures about the challenges and struggles of living in Brooklyn’s Los Sures neighborhood at that time. Nearly lost, the restored, reframed, and remixed documentary is now part of a multi-platform participatory media project of Brooklyn-based UnionDocs. For the third selection, NYFF Convergence will play host to a creator-guided tour of Futurestates, the compelling ITVS series that imagines the impact of technology on humanity in the not-so-distant future.

.NYFF Convergence Programmer Matt Bolish said, “The exciting thing about this form of storytelling is that it’s constantly evolving, changing, morphing, and being remixed. These three projects represent some of the most compelling immersive material we’ve seen to date.”

Focusing on the intersection of technology and storytelling, NYFF Convergence offers audiences and creators the unique opportunity to experience a curated selection of some of the most exciting immersive storytelling projects being produced today. Jenkins, who is the Provost’s Professor of Communication Journalism and Cinematic Arts at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, will focus his address (“A Brief History of Transmedia Worlds”) on world-building in the contemporary entertainment landscape, as it applies to film, as well as exploring the worlds of games, online content, books, etc.

Previewing the address, Jenkins said, “Today’s films, television series, games, comics, novels, and even documentaries and journalism rely heavily on the concepts of world-building and world-mapping. In this talk, I will provide a conceptual map for understanding what we mean by ‘worlds,’ what roles they are playing in the production and consumption of popular media, how thinking in terms of worlds involves a shift from more traditional focuses on character and narrative, and why this concept has gained such traction in an era of networked communication and transmedia entertainment.”

FILM AND PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS

 Los Sures
Diego Echeverria, USA, 1984, 16mm, 66m 
Diego Echeverria’s Los Sures skillfully represents the challenges of its time: drugs, gang violence, crime, abandoned real estate, racial tension, single-parent homes, and inadequate local resources in Brooklyn’s Los Sures neighborhood. Yet Echeverria’s portrait also celebrates the vitality of this largely Puerto Rican and Dominican community, showing the strength of their culture, their creativity, and their determination to overcome a desperate situation. Nearly lost, this 16mm film has been restored, reframed, and remixed by Southside based UnionDocs just in time for the 30th anniversary of its premiere at the New York Film Festival.
Saturday, July 27

Living Los Sures (Interactive Presentation)
Produced by UnionDocs, 2014
Using Escheverria’s 1984 documentary Los Sures as a starting point, Southside-based UnionDocs has created Living Los Sures, a massive mixed-media project that defies easy categorization. Composed over the course of four years and pulling on the talents of over 30 different artists, Living Los Sures paints a picture of a neighborhood from street level, an ever-evolving mosaic of people and places captured through film, audio, and now an online participatory experience.  With the premiere of two new elements—Eighty-Nine Steps, a continuation of the story of one of the original characters from Los Sures, and Shot by Shot—that invite people to share their personal stories inspired by the shots and locations of the original film, the UnionDocs team will take audiences through the process of building this unique documentary storyworld.
Saturday, July 27

The Last Hijack 
Tommy Pallotta & Femke Wolting, Netherlands, 2014, DCP, 83m
Mohamed is your average middle-aged man trying to make ends meet in his homeland: the failed state of Somalia. One of the country’s most experienced pirates, he is faced with constant pressure—from his fiancée, family, and friends—to get out of his dangerous profession. Far from the romantic figures of movies and literature, piracy is coming under increasing scrutiny from global forces and communities within Somalia. Sensing the end of an era, Mohamed must decide if he should risk everything and do one last hijack. As he wrestles with these very real problems, a dramatic tail of survival unfolds. How did Mohamed come to live this brutal and dangerous existence and is it possible to walk away? The Last Hijack is both a feature-length film, combining documentary footage and animation, and an online transmedia experience, allowing viewers a unique and original way to explore the story of Somali piracy from different perspectives.
Sunday, September 28

North American Premiere
The Last Hijack (Interactive Presentation)
Tommy Pallotta & Femke Wolting
Join directors Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting as they explore the immersive online components of The Last Hijack. The creators will offer a bird’s-eye view of the online elements of their documentary that investigates modern-day piracy.  Using data visualizations, animation, live footage, and audio, the online experiences paint a picture not of perpetrators of crimes and their victims but of real people whose actions have an effect on the world around them.
Sunday, September 28

Futurestates (Interactive Presentation)
Produced by ITVS, USA, 2014, 90m
What will America look like in 10, 15, even 20 years? Futurestates, the revolutionary series produced by ITVS, has been proposing answers to those questions since 2010. For its fifth and final season, Futurestates is presented as an immersive online video experience featuring short films that imagine robots with feelings, what education looks like in a wired world, and the future of prisons and our penal system. The central question at the heart of Futurestates is how technologies we may take for granted have a profound effect on our capacity to feel, create, live… and be human.
Sunday, September 28