Author: Ian Street

Long(er) Cycling Shorts

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Back in October I put on an evening of cycling short films, 12 films none of which was longer than 6 mins or so.  I loved putting it all together and think it went down well and I’ve been keen to do something similar.  As I was researching the films for the first evening there were lots that didn’t fit in primarily due to length so I’ve been looking to put on another evening with a small selection of slightly longer films 10-20 mins each and that’s what this evening will be.  Loosely based around two concepts of build and explore I’ll be showing 2 – 3 films around each concept.

While touching on the idea of explore, it was very sad to hear of the recent death of Mike Hall who was sadly killed while racing in the Indian Pacific Wheel Race in Australia.  All the proceeds from this evenings film screening will be donated to the just giving page set up to support Mike’s family.

Date: Monday 24 April at 7pm

Venue: The Reliance, 76-78 North Street, Leeds, LS2 7PN

Cost: £5 in advance (tickets can be bought via the Eventbrite link opposite and ticket price includes Eventbrite fee)

 

Half The Road

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HALF THE ROAD is a documentary film that explores the world of women’s professional cycling, focusing on both the love of sport and the pressing issues of inequality that modern-day female riders face in a male dominated sport. With footage from some of the world’s best UCI races to interviews with Olympians, World Champions, rookies, coaches, managers, officials, doctors and family members, HALF THE ROAD offers a unique insight to the drive, dedication, and passion it takes for a female cyclist to thrive.  Both on and off the bike, the voices and advocates of women’s pro cycling take the audience on a journey of enlightenment, depth, strength, love, humour and best of all, change & growth.

In addition to the international race footage and athlete interviews, the film also follows director/athlete Kathryn Bertine’s quest to make the 2012 Olympics during her first year racing professionally for Team Colavita. Bertine, a three-time national champion of St. Kitts and Nevis, explores the issues faced when smaller nations try to make strides in a sport that has no history of tradition or support within their culture. The title HALF THE ROAD comes from a segment of the film where the president of a small cycling federation quotes the old adage, “Women hold up half the sky” in reference to equality. The documentary explores the idea that, If women hold up half the sky, then the women’s peloton deserves ‘half the road’ of opportunity, growth, support & equality within professional cycling.

Kathryn: “we thought we were making a movie about women’s professional cycling. Then it turned into a film about equality, told through the medium of kick ass female athletes”

Date: Monday 20 March at 7pm

Venue: The Reliance, 76-78 North Street, Leeds, LS2 7PN

Cost: £6 in advance (tickets can be bought via the Eventbrite link opposite and ticket price includes Eventbrite fee)

The Flying Scotsman

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It is easy to forget with the string of gold medals at the Olypmpics and the dominance of Team Sky on the road that British cycling in the recent past was not awash with medals, money and household names.  The starting point to the current success had much to do with the rivalry between Graeme Obree and Chris Boardman.  It’s Chris Boardman who people now know well with his eponymous named bike brand and his gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics.  But there was another world record British cyclist at that time who’s remarkable story should never be forgotten.

The Flying Scotsman tells the true story of one of Britains great mavericks, the pioneering cyclist Graeme Obree.  A man who defied the odds, the establishment and his own mental health problems to become a world champion and world record holder on his ‘Old Faithful’ a bicycle he built including parts from an old washing machine.

Jonny Lee Miller plays Obree in the film and spent a lot of time with him to pick up his mannersism which resulted in a BAFTA nomination and Obree himself appears in some of the cycling sequences.

You know there’s something deeply wrong from the opening moments as Obree is pictured traipsing through the woods holding his bike and a length of rope. How he got there looking to commit suicide is the story of the film, a true classic tale of the heroic little guy that goes beyond the sport of cycling, told with elegant restraint in this sensitive and beautifully rendered film directed by Douglas Mackinnon. Obree, a Scottish messenger boy and amateur cyclist defied the odds by twice holding the world hour record, one of cycling’s most revered achievements.

Obree battled depression before and after his triumphs (which included other titles including the world championships). But that was hardly the worst of his problems. The greater evil in his life was perhaps the sport itself — or rather, those who made up its rules. Official cyclingdom looked askance at the achievements of the onetime bike courier with few corporate sponsors and the UCI seemed to go out of it’s way to make Obree life difficult and to sully his achievements.  There is a real painful cyclical irony to the story in that while turning to the bike helped save Obree it also pushed him into the depths of despair.

So come along and share in the story of this remarkable man, bring your tissues and a sense of righteous indignation !

Date: Monday 20 February at 7pm

Venue: The Reliance, 76-78 North Street, Leeds, LS2 7PN

Cost: £5.50 in advance (tickets can be bought via the Eventbrite link opposite and ticket price includes Eventbrite fee)

Screening Dates for 2017

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Thought it might be useful to put up all the dates that I’m planning to show screenings across 2017.  All films get announced on here, via twitter @LeedsBicycleFC, on Eventbrite, on Leeds Inspired and you can sign up to the mailing list through the website and you will get an email.

All screenings take place at The Reliance in Leeds and are scheduled for the following dates:

January  23 – The Untold Story of British Mountain Biking
Feb 20 – The Flying Scotsman
March 20 – Half The Road
April 24 – Long(er) Cycling Shorts
May 22 – The Triplets Belleville
June 19 – No screening
July 17 – Clean Spirit
No date in August
Sep 18 – no screening unfortunately
Oct 16 – Bicycle The Film
Nov 20 – Quicksilver

Get the dates in your diary and I look forward to saying hi, having a beer and bringing more good cycling films and documentaries for us to enjoy.

Mountain Biking : The Untold British Story

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Getting off the concrete of my commute and onto the fat tyres and into the woods and the mud is what I love to do.  I’m utterly rubbish at it but I love it just the same.  Since I set up the Bicycle Film Club I’ve wanted to get some mountain bike films and documentaries lined up and I’ve got a few options for 2017 and what better way to kick things off in January than this new film from Blue Hippo Media and Singletrack Magazine.

Mountain biking is now in it’s 4th decade and it’s come a long way from it’s beginnings in the hills of the West Coast USA. But that’s only part of the story. The UK MTB scene grew in parallel to the well told US tale and this documentary, from BAFTA award winning film-maker Michael Clifford, aims to layout the complete and unique history of how the MTB developed in British mud.

Through archive footage of early XC racing through to the modern adrenaline fueled disciplines of Enduro, this film will layout the British claim to the origins of the modern mountain bike scene. Featuring interviews with legendary names such as Tracy Moseley, Steve Peat, Dan, Gee and Rachel Atherton, Martyn Ashton, Rob Warner, Gary Fisher, Jason Miles, Geoff Apps, Carlton Reid and many more, this will be the story of how the Brits have carved their names into history and helped shape the global phenomenon that is mountain biking.

Brush the mud off and come and enjoy the best of British Mountain Biking

Date: Monday 23 January at 7pm

Venue: The Reliance, 76-78 North Street, Leeds, LS2 7PN

Cost: £5 in advance (tickets can be bought via the Eventbrite link opposite)

Bicycle Thieves

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Lamberto Maggiorani and Enzo Staiola in Vittorio di Sica's 1948 Bicycle Thieves

 

For our final film of 2016 I’m really pleased to be showing what has regularly polled as one of the greatest films of all time – Vittorio de Sica’s 1948 classic Ladri di Bicilette, or Bicycle Thieves.  The film was a key part of the Italian neorealism movement and things didn’t get much more real than this study of poverty in postwar Rome.  Indeed all of the film was shot on location, no studio sets were used and the cast were untrained non actors (Lamberto Maggiorani was a factory worker).  De Sica wanted to portray the poverty and unemployment of post war Italy and was unable to attract any financial backing from any major studio so eventually funded the film himself with the help of friends.

Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) is a poor man who is thrilled when he is at last offered a job: delivering and putting up movie posters. But he needs a bicycle, and must supply his own, so his wife Maria (Lianella Carelli) pawns the family’s entire stock of bed linen to redeem the bicycle he had already hocked. On his first day his bike is stolen and Antonio drops everything to go on a desperate odyssey through the streets of Rome with his little boy Bruno (Enzo Staiola) to get it back, pleading and accusing and uncovering scenes of poverty similar to theirs wherever they go. Faces always gather around the pair, commenting, complaining and magnifying the couples’ distress.

Antonio seems unable or unwilling to embrace the obvious redemptive moral – that his son is the important possession, not the bicycle but perhaps because this moral is a luxury that only rich people can afford. The father remains obsessed with finding a stolen needle in the urban haystack, obsessed with getting his job back.  The result is a brutal authentic portrayal of poverty and a brilliant work of art.  Despite this being filmed in 1948 in post war Italy there are worrying and unsettling parallels to the desperate situation that many find themselves in today, both in Italy and closer to home.

I hope you will join us for a slice of cinema history.

 

Date: Monday 14 November at 7pm

Venue: The Reliance, 76-78 North Street, Leeds, LS2 7PN

Cost: £6 in advance (tickets can be bought via the Eventbrite link opposite)

Cycling Shorts

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Ever since I set up the Leeds Bicycle Film Club it was always my intention to show a selection of short films as there is an amazing array of really creative and interesting short films out there.  The issue was working out how I was going to have the time to chase down all the permissions in order to curate an interesting evening.  Luckily Laura who knows everything about putting on films and as been invaluable in helping me was also interested and so as part of this years Yorkshire Festival we teamed up to do a cycle social evening which featured a documentary and a selection of shorts that I curated and Laura helped to get the permissions.

So I’ve now got a cracking evening of short films to put on.  There are 12 films, none longer that about 6 minutes and featuring all different types of film making from music video to Oscar winning animation, politics to humour to mock horror and featuring all different types of bikes and riding from lots of different countries.

As an added bonus a local cyclist and Super 8 film maker will be joining us to show us his short film as well as having a chat and answering questions on the film making process and the work that goes into making a short film.

So stick your cycling shorts on and come and see mine !

Date: Monday 17 October at 7pm

Venue: The Reliance, 76-78 North Street, Leeds, LS2 7PN

Cost: £5 in advance (tickets can be bought via the Eventbrite link opposite)

 

For The Love of Mud

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For our September film we are delving into the muddy world of cyclocross.  Who cannot remember the pure unadulterated joy of riding through a muddy puddle as a child, whooping with joy as mud splattered your face?  Well the cyclocross world has taken this feeling and bottled it riding laps of muddy fields during the winter, although there seems to be quite a bit a pain involved to me as it’s searingly tough.

For The Love Of Mud explores this world in all it’s forms from the tens of thousands who flock to the superprestige races in Belgium where the likes of Sven Nys are superstars to the northern British fields where happy amateurs do battle. The genre originally started so that road riders could continue to keep fit and race over the winter in the off season but has now developed into a fast growing sport loved by racers and fans alike.

Benedict Campbell spent two years making the Love of Mud providing a beautiful history and narrative on the “religion” of cyclocross.

Date: Monday 19 July at 7pm

Venue: The Reliance, 76-78 North Street, Leeds, LS2 7PN

Cost: £6 in advance (tickets can be bought via the eventbrite link opposite)

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Slaying the Badger

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With the Tour de France upon us this months film looks back at a classic rivalry from the 1986 tour.  Cycling, like most sports, loves a classic rivalry but nothing spikes that rivalry more than when the riders are on the same team as was the case with Greg Lemond and Bernard Hinault.  The story goes that Greg agreed to help Hinault win the 1985 tour to become a record equalling 5 times tour winner but the deal was that it would be reciprocated the following year with Hinault helping Lemond.  However was Hinault really going to pass up the chance to try and be the record tour winner?

Hinault aka the Badger was known for his ruthless streak and he brilliantly describes how he did not renege on the deal saying that he would help Lemond win but he didn’t have to make it easy.  The documentary is not just the story of a sporting rivalry but rather two conflicting stories of the same event.  Lemond’s people have one version Hinaults’s another which, even though we may know the outcome of the race, adds intrigue and colour to the stories of the two great riders and rivals.

One lesson is clear.  Don’t mess with the Badger

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Date: 18 July at 7pm

Venue: The Reliance, 76-78 North Street, Leeds, LS2 7PN

Cost: £4 in advance (tickets can be bought via the eventbrite link opposite) – all profits from this screening will be going to charity.

 

Jour de Fete

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Jour de Fete (“The Big Day”) is a 1949 French comedy directed by the legendary Jacques Tati in his feature film directional debut.  It tells the story of an inept and easily distracted French postman who frequently interrupts his duties to converse with the local inhabitants, as well as inspect the travelling fair that has come to his small community. Influenced by too much wine and a newsreel account of rapid transportation methods used by the United States postal system, he goes to hilarious lengths to speed the delivery of mail while aboard his bicycle.

The film introduces what would be a key theme in Tati films, the over-reliance of Western society on technology to solve its (perceived) problems.  Tati beautifully illustrates the circular nature of this futile cycle for efficiency in a great moment in the film as he practices new biking techniques while on a merry go round. Yes, he’s getting faster, but he’s going in circles. Representing ideas of Modern society and efficiency, it shows that while the world is moving faster, it moves so fast it moves back in on itself.  Perhaps as prescient now as it was then ?

Originally released in 1949 and shot in black and white but also in Thomson colour, an early and untried colour film process.  In 1995 technology allowed the restoration of the colour copy which was finished and released by Tati’s daughter Sophie Tatischeff and cinematographer Francois Ede.

Join us for this warm, wry critique of modern life.

Date: 20 June at 7pm

Venue: The Reliance, 76-78 North Street, Leeds, LS2 7PN

Cost: £6 in advance (tickets can be bought via the eventbrite link opposite)