Birdmen – The Original Dream of Flight

Staring down a sheer precipice into a deep abyss with your head spinning, every fibre in your body tries to resist the edge. Meet the men and women who don’t. Overcoming their fears, they step off into thin air and fly like birds, hurtling at impossible speeds and gliding across beautiful rolling landscapes. A startling, adrenaline-filled insight into the revolutionary new sport that brings the dream of human flight alive. At first you might mistake it for a mountaintop costume party: three young hikers in flapping, brightly-coloured bat costumes, pausing to admire the view. But under their faintly ridiculous trappings, Matt, Ellen and Mike are deadly serious. They are wingsuit basejumpers — diehard members of an elite sporting community. Prior to flinging themselves into the void, they’ve made lengthy calculations, and are prepared to make split-second decisions once airborne. While standing, walking or at rest, their wings hang heavy and uncomfortable from the human body. But in mid-air they seem to morph into a new species and leave the human race behind. In the words of one basejumper: “it’s only when you leave the cliff – when you’re flying – that you really feel at home.” The very idea of human flight is one of our deepest sources of fear and desire. As old as the oldest myths, it’s become a pop cultural motif, recurring in movies and comics from Star Wars to Superman. Throughout history, self-styled “birdmen” have been flying in the face of danger: to men like …
Video Rating: 4 / 5

15 thoughts on “Birdmen – The Original Dream of Flight”

Awesome! Makes me so jealous of the lives that some people have made for themselves. Way to go guys!

Nearly as good as the Jeb Corlis film…which I watched for free!
Amazing doc about the evolution of the sport tho.

reallly good and inspiring, wingsuit here i come, but first 200 jumps 😀

eh… seems kind of boring

Wow.

This is the second time ive rented this incredible film, and im now about to watch it for the 4th time.
Bravo to the creators, fucking awesome.

Amazing. Glad I watched this tonight finally after becoming interested after I watched Matt Gerdes’ Red Bull jump in China for the first time. As a low-time private pilot and life-long dreamer of flight, this is the ultimate expression of that passion.

Suggestion: include a statement on this page letting people know the film/file is not formatted to play on mobile devices (at least that’s the message I got the first time I paid for the rental via Droid phone).

Thanks to the jumpers!