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For devotees, the Tour de France is no less than a religion. 'The racing cyclists are the celebrants and the journalists the precentors', says the archivist of the French newspaper L'Equipe. Director Erik van Empel started a search for the time when the event mainly took place in the imagination, via oral tradition. He has to go back to the year 1948, the year before television was introduced. Making use of archive footage, interviews with the heroes of yesteryear and images of the modern Tour, Van Empel particularly revives the hell of the thirteenth stage of the 1948 Tour. When riding the same route in the evening twilight, the exhausted numb cyclists are riding along. Briek Schotte, better known as IJzeren Briek and finishing second in 1948, remembers it as if it happened yesterday: Bartali finished Bobet, literally finished him with his breakaways.'

Credits

Production company
Scarabeefilms
TV company
NTR
Distributor NL
A-Film Distribution

Title: Tour des Légendes
Year: 2003
Duration : 1 hour, 8 minutes
Category: Long Documentary
Edition: NFF 2003

Gouden Kalf nominees

Beste Sound Design (2003)
Michel Schöpping

NFF Archive

You are now in the NFF Archive. The archive contains contains information on film, TV and interactive productions that were screened at past festival editions. The NFF does not dispose of this material. For this, please contact the producer, distributor or broadcaster. Sometimes, older films can also be found at the Eye Film Museum or the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

Stills

Still