Large, monied watch brands have the capital to support some pretty ambitious projects. Some of these are directly watch-related, some less so, and some are philanthropic in nature and have little to do with timekeeping. Many of them are pretty badass.
One of the cooler ones to come across our desk lately is a short film called “Dreams of Flight” that was backed by Hamilton Watches, a Swatch Group member and a longtime maker of timepieces that have featured prominently in cinema. Hamilton brand ambassador Dario Costa, a professional aerobatics pilot from the age of 16, worked with British photographer and filmmaker Jacob Sutton to capture and produce a movie of Costa doing his thing in an aerobatic plane over the dunes of Namibia.
The film took an international team three days to capture and included a helicopter crew, a ground crew and cameras founded on the fuselage of Costa’s plane. Fittingly, Costa wore a Hamilton X-Wind 45mm pilot’s watch throughout the project, an automatic day-date aviation watch featuring multiple scales for calculating crosswinds and based upon the famed Valjoux 7750 movement.
The film is less than 2:00 and incredibly beautiful. If you’re into pilots watches — and more importantly, flight itself — it’s worth a watch.
