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Home > Screenings > Power > The Birdman Chronicles

Genres: Entertainment

Shows: The Birdman Chronicles

Companies: Power


1 x 60 mins

Wingsuiting is an activity that probably comes the closest to realising man’s age-old desire to fly. Participants don a specially designed jumpsuit that adds surface area to their bodies, enabling a significant increase in lift and controlled flight. They literally fly like birds.

As the sport is only a few years old, little information is available on how many people take part in it, and high publicity around fatal wingsuiting accidents has led to it being (perhaps unfairly) labeled as “probably the most dangerous sport in the world”.

It is normally associated with thrill-seeking daredevils flying ridiculously close to rock faces, taking apparent pleasure in defying death with every unbelievable flight.

This documentary shows a completely different side of this high adrenalin extreme activity. It zooms in on the individuals inside the birdman suits and reveals how their flying has forever changed them and altered their views on life and death.
We follow a group of wingsuiters in South Africa at different stages of their wingsuiting careers, shortly after the country’s first wingsuit fatality. They speak with uncanny frankness about their reasons for being wingsuiters, the almost supernatural thrill of being able to fly like a bird, but also about the unique sacrifices the sport requires.

Featuring breathtaking visual imagery filmed in African, European and American skies, “The Birdmen Chronicles” tells a poignant story of human striving and sacrifice, and is sure to turn popular conceptions about birdmen and -women completely upside down.

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