Saturday, 27th January 2024, 7-9pm
Belhaven Church Hall
Film show and potluck meal
Potluck meal from 7pm, film from 7.45pm
Scottish film curator Jo Reid’s new archive film, The Freedom Machine, celebrates the bicycle and its role in the emancipation of women.
The Freedom Machine celebrates both the trailblazing cyclists who changed the world and the ordinary everyday women whose lives were changed by cycling throughout the last 100 years.
Using archival footage from the UK-wide archives, including the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive, and featuring sequences from Life of the Bicycle, it premiered at Glasgow Film Festival 2023.
The film is accompanied by a hypnotic soundtrack from Glasgow-based sound designer Catherine Hawthorne.
Stories within the film include: Jean Cameron’s crusade to add trousers to the female post officer’s uniform; sixteen year old cyclist Louise Garbett’s ambition to become world champion and Aimee Pfanner’s daring ride across the Thames in a hydrocycle. They show how women have approached cycling in a variety of ways: as a political statement, a practical necessity, and for pleasure.