Mariononi

 Excellent

What a great movie! Take the  creator of the fantastic Marinoni hand crafted bikes renowned far beyond his home in Montreal. Marinoni was a great cyclist in his youth and now he's preparing to challenge the record for furthest distance cycled in one hour by a 75-year-old, a race that the great Eddie Merckx said was the hardest race of his life. He'll use the bike he crafted for champion Canadian cyclist Jocelyn Lovell - why had I never heard of this great Canadian athlete of the 60s and 70s?

We see the filmmaker break through Marinoni's initial suspicion and resistance to the filming. We see Marinoni's passion for building the best possible bikes. We're charmed by Marinoni's excitement at finding mushrooms in the woods, as he did when he was a kid in Italy. We're delighted by his wonderful dry sense of humour. We're touched when Marinoni visits Lovell, who is now a quadriplegic after an accident during training. There was so much to enjoy in this film, and we all had a great Sunday afternoon watching it.

The director thanked Hot Docs for lighting a fire under him to finish the movies. Hot Docs accepted the film when it was only half done, and the film was finished with 4 days to spare before its premiere on Friday. Thank goodness he finished, so we could enjoy this treat of a movie.