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Black Cyclone: Africa and its Diaspora’s Love for the Bicycle

Emerging Film Curators 2022

A woman rides her bike

From country gravel paths to Tour De France tarmac, this is a series of films exploring and applauding Black people and their attachment to cycling.

How do you unpack Africa and its diaspora, with its pride, achievements and ambitions, colonialist hum and complex two-way assimilation? The answer may lie with that supremely efficient invention, the bicycle.

Black Cyclone is a programme that has gathered a series of films celebrating black people and their attachment to cycling.

From tales of the Black Foxes, an African-American collective of cyclists meeting for the first time for a ride in the wilds, to Eritrean triumph in the Tour De France, Black Cyclone explores the myriad ways that cyclists of Colour interact with their communities, surroundings and the wider world on two wheels.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion hosted by film curator and former bike messenger Ephraim Webber.

 

Programme

The Black Foxes 

The Black Foxes is an international collective of unapologetically Black cyclists reclaiming the freedom and joy of the outdoors. On their first anniversary in June 2021, The Black Foxes gathered to celebrate, reflect and envision the road ahead. Due to the state of the world in 2020, for many of them it was the first-time meeting in person.

US 2021 Dir B. Monét 15 min

In Tandem 
There’s no team quite like L39ION of Los Angeles. Borne from a brotherhood intent on shaking up the cycling scene and creating meaningful change, they’re a team packed full of individuality, but united in more ways than one. Founded by Justin and Cory Williams, intent on driving diversity and inclusion in the sport, the team now boasts three sets of siblings, including Skylar and Samantha Schenider, plus Kendall and Alexis Ryan. Featuring some home footage and thoughts on the team’s future, this film is an intimate look into the start of their cycling careers and the unique, unspoken closeness that shared experience brings.

US 2022 US 18 min

King of the Mountains

On the Horn of Africa, with around 5 million people lies the enigmatic country of Eritrea. How has this small, multi-cultural nation dominated the continent of African cycling … and produced the first Black African cyclists to finish the mighty Tour de France? This is the story of Daniel Teklehaimanot and the giants of Eritrean cycling.
 

South Africa 2017 Dir James Walsh 30 min

Film running-time: 63 min

Full programme running-time: 90 min

About the Curator: Ephraim Webber

Since completing the Barbican’s Emerging Film Curators Lab, Ephraim Webber has gone on to become the film curator and programmer at Bernie Grant Arts Centre, in Tottenham, North London. Ephraim also hosts and moderates Q&As and panel discussions at the ICA, Genesis cinema, and the Egg nightclub in King’s Cross.   

Previously he worked as former editor of Bible Graphotism, and as a freelance music, fashion and film writer for style magazines and TV. 

Supported by
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Cinema 3