Showcase Canberra
Dreams on Wheels Film Series
Several exciting documentaries were shown for dreams on wheels. They include Jørgen Leths documentaries about the Tour de France and the cycling classic Paris-Roubaix entitled 'A Sunday in Hell', as well as a documentary entitled 'Cities for people' which illustrates the ideas of Jan Gehl.
'Cities for people'
Jan Gehl, a Danish architect has spent a generation studying the behavioral patterns of people in cities. In this film Gehl travels around the Nordic cities and explains why some cities are inviting and how others actually repel us, leaving us cold. It's not a question of being aesthetically beautiful or ugly, but rather a question of whether a city-center is suited to our senses and movements. Cities for People shows how we conduct ourselves in cities and how our senses of sight, hearing, speaking and feeling respond to them.
Duration 57 minutes.
Year of production: 2000. Directed by Lars Mortensen.
Jørgen Leth bicycle trilogy
- 'En forårsdag i helvede'/'A Sunday in Hell'
Jørgen Leths personal film about the Paris- Roubaix race is one of the most powerful portrayals of cycling ever made. The race is considered the toughest in cycling and is feared by cyclists for its combination of bumpy cobblestone pavements and the fickle spring weather of northern France. The film gives the race its own heroes and villains, described with Leth's unique mix of objectivity and myth-making. A Sunday in Hell is just that: a film about a Sunday, with its own dramatic, harsh poetry- from the early- morning preparations by the teams mecanics to filthy racers showering after the final stretch in Roubaix.
Duration: 111 min.
Year of production: 1976. Directed by: Jørgen Leth
- 'Stjernene og vandbærene'/'Stars and Water Carriers'
Jørgen Leth made a film about the international cycle race Giro d'Italia - without hiding the financial interests behind it - which appears to defend the idolisation of professional sports. In Leth's own words, 'I regard the world of sports as classical theatre whose heroes evoke classicals virtues, like those of mythology, and do legendary performances. This is the object of my praise and study'. Belgian Eddy Merckx is the film's real principal character, but the film also focuses on the time trial of the legendary Danish cyclist, Ole Ritter.
Duration: 93 min.
Year of production: 1974. Directed by Jørgen Leth
- 'Den umulige time'/ 'The impossible Hour'
A concentrated study of Ole Ritter's attempt to recapture the most compelling and most difficult record set in professional cycling: a one-hour, one-man race on a track. The attempts to break the record took place in Mexico City in November, 1974. The film includes a description of Ritter's special training on a sophisticated purpose-built track bike and the psychological conditioning required for achieving a concentrated performance at this level. 'The Impossible Hour' is an objective yet lyrically intimate study of a loner's defiant- and unsuccessful attempt to make sporting history.
Duration: 45 min.
Year of production: 1975. Director: Jørgen Leth
'Overcoming'
Kelly's heros on wheels. Fiction as fact: Overcoming is a film that provides a profound and penetrating insight into the hermetically closed world of professional cycling. With former pro rider, Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis as our protagonist, the film follows him and his new team CSC as they strive for the impossible: to become the world's best and win Tour de France.
Duration: 106 min.
Year of production: 2005. Directed by : Tómas Gislason
Fun-cycle trip in Denmark
A documentary in road movie-dogma style. The movie introduces everyone from the man who takes his bike to the harbour in the Skaw (Skagen) in north west of Denmark to buy fish, to bike innovators in comfortable Copenhagen. The film also has a look at the bike exhibition in the Danish house of culture on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris and shows some of the difference between bike culture in Denmark and France.
Duration: 28 min.
Year of production: 2002. Directed by: Henrik Ljungquist.