Boston Bicycle Film Fest Day 2

Road to Roubaix

When Lance Armstrong calls something “insane,” you know it’s got to be truly nuts. Paris-Roubaix is a 112-year-old, 160-mile bike race through former World War I battlefields in northern France. Riders must contend with unpaved streets, insane cobblestones, and tricky turns on one of the most difficult courses in professional cycling. The filmmakers interview Roubaix participants (current and former), bike mechanics, cycling journalists, photographers, spectators, and more to provide a comprehensive and compelling portrait of the race.

Johnny Green nearly makes the film with his dramatic pronouncements about cycling in general and Roubaix in particular. He demonstrates through borderline hyperbole just how respected and reviled the race is. Bikers must have a little bit of craziness and a lot of luck to win Roubaix. The race tends to be full of crashed and equipment malfunctions; mechanics describe how post-Roubaix bikes are unsuitable for racing again. Wheels are replaced routinely on the course, which wreaks havoc on tires with its cobblestones.

Another unique aspect of Roubaix is the shower room. Old, grimy stone showers provide a place for riders to congregate after the race, a communal meeting ground that doesn’t exist at other races, where riders are whisked away to their tour buses and never meet each other as humans. The showers are an equalizing space, bringing everyone together regardless of race performance. They also provide amazing visuals. Riders streaked with mud from the race remove their jerseys, revealing just how dirty Paris-Roubaix has made them—not to mention how many injuries they’ve sustained. Red welts glare from pale skin on elbows, knees, hips, and other body parts. The men soap up their ears to get the dirt out. It’s almost a purifying ritual after the hell that is Roubaix.

Road to Roubaix is a movie that will make you want to put “ride the Paris-Roubaix route” or even “watch Paris-Roubiax in person” (but maybe not actually "race Paris-Roubaix") on your list of things to do before you die. A truly remarkable film about an amazing race.

Pedal

Almost as notable for its filming methods (much of it appears to have been shot on a bike) as for its content, Pedal provides remarkable insight into the world of bike messengers in New York City, the world capital of the profession. Casual riders and pedestrians may have been nearly mowed over by these riders; cars have probably cursed them out and cut them off a number of times. But bike messengering—especially in NYC—remains a viable business, and Pedal explores the motivations of those who do it by interviewing a number of messengers.

In offering up reasons for being a bike messenger, Eric suggests that it could be for the fun of riding, it could be because they don’t want to work inside the “prison” of four walls all day, or “it could be that they like to eat.” Many of the messengers depicted seem to have few other employment options. Messenger Kid counsels anyone who has the opportunity “to go to school to be a doctor or lawyer or whatever” to do so; he wouldn’t recommend being a messenger to anyone—but at the same time he doesn’t appear prepared to give it up. When money is tight and he’s recovering from a bad ankle injury, Eric ponders leaving the business, but doesn’t appear to know what else he would do. He eventually hits on dispatching messengers as a possibility, but feels that wouldn’t be as fun as actually riding. While being a messenger feels like being “a spinning robot,” he doesn’t know that he’s ready to dis the subculture by leaving it.

Pedal also covers an alleycat race in which messengers are given a route with multiple destinations to ride—no brakes—and the first to the finish is essentially the ultimate messenger. At the very first checkpoint, one of the riders is hit by a cab while running a red light (remember that no brakes thing?). She stands up and walks away from the accident, but her bike is damaged. She spends the $50 her mother had given her for a helmet on repairing the bike instead.

A cabbie calls messengers “dangerous” and a “menace,” saying they should be required to get training, licenses, and tickets when they violate the law. He admits that he will deliberately cut off messengers and make it difficult for them to maneuver, revealing the almost all-out war between messengers and cars.

Bike cops in NYC do their best to ticket messengers who break the law, but it’s not always easy. Messengers and cops alike describe long chases between the two, with one messenger gloating about how he got away from a “fat cop” who probably went home to his “cookies and pork chops.”

Dexter is one of the more fascinating messengers—he’s interviewed talking about his childhood in Jamaica and his love for biking. It’s not until we’ve heard a lot about his career as a messenger that we learn he has only one leg. He carries his crutches with him on his bike, which he handles better with one leg than most people could with two. He asserts that he’ll keep biking “until the last breath leaves my body.”

The messengers take a lot of pride in what they do, but it’s a defensive pride. They know that people look down on them and would “spit on you as soon as look at you,” as one messenger puts it. That disdain only increases their defiance. The messengers take pride in being “outlaws,” in being “losers that win” by finding a way to make a little money doing what they love—and being free. Pedal is a rough yet touching portrait of this intriguing subculture.

Tonight, program 6 of Urban Bike Shorts starts at 9 at the ICA. Hop on your bike for some great films! The festival afterparty also starts at 9 at Great Scott, and there’s an Urban Bike Ride meeting at the Christian Science Center Plaza at 11:30 am Sunday.