About

Motorcycles on Screen: Experimental Shorts contains screenings of Scorpio Rising 1963, They Caught the Ferry 1948, and Impatience 1928.

Scorpio Rising 1963 (Dir. Kenneth Anger)

Scorpio Rising will screen from an archival 16mm print.

‘A "death mirror held up to American culture" - Brando, bikes and black leather; Christ, chains and cocaine. A "high" view of the myth of the American motorcyclist. The machine as totem from toy to terror. Thanatos in chrome and black leather and bursting jeans.’ – Kenneth Anger

'Epochal in a number of ways, this seductive montage intercuts homoerotic shots of a Brooklyn motorcycle gang with found footage and images of American cultural icons. The splendid score of bubblegum pop adds ironic counterpoint. The film created a new cinematic language that could be seen as a prototype for both MTV-like music videos and reality TV. Its style influenced directors including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.' KVIFF

They Caught the Ferry 1948 (Dir. Carl Th Dreyer)

They Caught the Ferry will screen from an archival 16mm print.

'A young couple on a motorbike speed to reach the ferry. But death is out to get them in the form of a truck driver on the road. Will they make the ferry, have an appointment with death, or both? This short movie is meant as a propaganda against fast driving.' Trust Nordisk

Impatience 1928 (Dir. Charles Dekeukeleire)

‘An unjustly overlooked figure of the European avant-garde, Belgian filmmaker Charles Dekeukeleire made only four experimental works in the 1920s. …Impatience is built around what Dekeukeleire called the four “characters” of the film, introduced in a title card as The Mountain, The Motorcycle, The Woman, and Abstract Blocks. Each element appears in a succession of discrete, repeated shots, their relationship suggested exclusively via montage, yet never granting the viewer the climactic payoff of fiction they at first appear to promise. The evocation of speed and a vertiginous cinematography seem in tune with the loopier elements of the 20s avant-garde, but ultimately Impatience feels less allied to contemporaneous experiments such as Ballet mécanique and more like a forgotten ancestor to the internal-combustion erotics of Kustom Kar Kommandos.’ Light Industry

Ages 18+