La Regate: Rowing on the big screen
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Rowing is the prominent theme behind a new Belgian film to be released later this month. “La Regate” (The Boat Race) centres on the life of 15 year old Alex who has set his mind on winning the Belgian Rowing Championships. But Alex has to deal with an abusive father. Alex uses rowing to escape his violent home life.
Directed by Belgian filmmaker, Bernard Bellefroid, the story is based on Bellefroid’s own upbringing. Bellefroid describes in the film’s publicity, “I know Alexandre well. For a long I looked at the world through his eyes…I ended up believing that violence was a language like any other.”
The rowing sports centre of Hazewinkel is used for much of the rowing scenes with rowers from clubs throughout Belgium being utilised. The Belgian Rowing Federation was involved in providing rowing officials and supplying technical advice. FISA’s chair of the umpiring commission, Patrick Rombaut appears as an official.
This is Bellefroid’s first ‘fiction’ film and already ‘La Regate’ has been recognised by the International Rome Film Festival 2009 as well as the Festival De Namur 2009. Bellefroid has also produced two documentaries.
Bellefroid was interviewed by World Rowing. Here are his translated words:
World Rowing: You call rowing a “very violent sport”, what are the aspects of rowing that lead you to consider rowing from this angle?
Bernard Bellefroid: It is the most complete sport that makes all muscles work. It is very hard. Sometimes rowers throw up after the finish. It is an endurance sport, with little media attention. The people who give their life to this sport are rarely known. It is a life school, a demanding sport. If you’re not tall enough, it’s hard to succeed. I rowed 4 years, in Belgium. My rowing is cinema.
WR: What similarities/differences do you make between the “violence” of rowing and domestic violence?
BB: As in all sports, you are violent towards yourself (Note: In French, “to be violent to yourself” can relate to putting pressure on yourself). This violence is chosen and controlled. If you can control such a violence, perhaps you can control violence outside of yourself. Violence can be perfectly healthy and is not innately evil. The problem is how to channel and express violence.
WR: One of the messages of your film is that rowing has the power to change a life. What, in your opinion, gives rowing such a power?
BB: I’m not sure that sport can change a life. Those who change lives are the ones who practice rowing, the people who are around in the club. You do rowing for the right reasons. All of the rowing people I met were very good people. The values of rowing: solidarity, work – before being able to do the right movements, you need to accept to be watched by someone else. You need to learn to be comfortable in your body to row well.
WR: How long did it take you to make "La Regate"?
BB: Five years. For three and a half years there were no finances. Once the finances came in, it took 18 months. It is a story of love, but of love that expresses itself in the wrong way. The first reaction of potential financial partners was that the story was a cliché and had already been seen a thousand times. But the story had not been told in this way before. People did not know what rowing was and mixed it up with canoe-kayak. Rowing is a difficult sport to film without the proper means.
WR: Why did you persevere [until you received the finances]?
BB: I must be a maniac! Maybe that is what rowing taught me in life. In rowing, even if you know not everyone will be a champion, there is great respect between rowers. Even if not everyone would become a great champion, everyone is taken care of in a similar fashion.
WR: What were the logistical details specific to making this film?
BB: I did not want to film from the banks of the rowing course, I wanted to be in the midst of the rage, the violence, and to see the suffering faces.
It took four days to film the main race, changing the filming angles. The boat of the actors was attached to a big motorised launch, allowing the camera to be placed at the height of the oars. We cut the oars off to be able to do this. Rowers take great care of their rowing equipment and respect it greatly. The filming crew did not have the same logic. We damaged the boats for the right cause. We used a four to film a pair, placing the cameraman in stroke seat. We wanted to be on the water, not beside the water to film.
It was filmed in Hazewinkel in four days. The race plan for the actors was: bad start, and moving up the field. Each extra boat had a Walkie Talkie [for instructions on how the race should go]. At the 1500m mark, the main boat was supposed to go past the boat in lane three. Some rowers refused to let themselves get beaten [despite the instructions]. But each boat had to accept to be rowed past.
WR: What are the angles that you favoured to film rowing?
BB: Essentially suffering. I wanted to show the sound that you never hear, when rowers talk to each other, encourage each other, their breath. I wanted a short camera 1m away from the rowers. I wanted more an image of war, not images stolen far away from the action.
WR: How many rowers were in the film?
BB: Extras on the water were from Belgium, from all the rowing clubs of Belgium. There is not one club who did not send a representative. Boats were missing, so the French Federation lent boats. There was great solidarity, otherwise we would not have managed. Everyone from Belgium rowing was in the film (about 300 – 400 rowers). The actors were replaced by rowing stand-ins for certain close-ups – stand-ins were able to do 4km, 6km per day. We had to look for stand-ins who looked like our actors from the back. We created an imaginary club and the decorator had to sand down and paint the oars in the colours of the clubs.
WR: What was the relationship of the lead actor, Joffrey Verbruggen with rowing before playing Alex?
BB: He had never rowed, but he and his partner rowed for two and a half months before filming began. They were coached by Alain Lewillion (Belgium coach) and trained with the rowers who would go to the World Rowing Junior Championships. They were not happy, it was too hard. Rowers would tell them “that’s not how you row”. They needed to develop automatic reflexes so that it would look natural on the screen and they couldn’t achieve that without training. Alain was always there for training/coaching scenes that were filmed. Alain helped Sergi López [the actor playing the coach] to find the right words. Real rowers were always around.
WR: In which countries will the film be distributed?
BB: In France (17 February), Belgium (24 February), Luxembourg (26 February) and we have good hopes for Switzerland and Quebec, Canada... There's no telling which other countries the career of this film will bring it to.
USEFUL LINKS
| "La Regate" website |
| "La Regate" trailer |
| "La Regate" Facebook page |
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