The wish to unglue himself from the ground, to rise above it with only the strength oh his muscles, has been one of man’s oldest yearnings yet to come true. The story of the film is a result of the Mayor’s wish to have his Island enter aviation history, and the impotence of the chosen “flyer”, who in his blind passion for flying doesn’t even notice his wife’s affair with the mailman or the conspiracy of the village big shots, who are ready to sacrifice their neighbour for the dubious distinction of being written of as the first self powered aviator. The church bell, the stake for a successful flight, ends up on the “flyers” yard since the pilot has kept his word :”I will fly. I will rise, glide through the air, or I’ll never walk the ground again.”

The Flying Machine

Val Sebald is an author who comes to the Island to retreat from life and land. There he lives among the islanders and his favorite women, the heroines of various maritime novels. His relations with actual women from his past are reduced to messages in bottles that he ceremonially throws into the water. Val brings the real and imaginary people together into a place he is comfortable with, while his real life also becomes more and more one with the sea and the underwater world.