Tom Cardy.
A new feature documentary looks at the unusual story of a former champion American cyclist who went to post-genocide Rwanda to train its national cycle team. Film-maker TC Johnstone talks to
SUMMARISING the story told in feature documentary Rising from Ashes is easy. Champion cyclist Jock Boyer – the first American to ride in the Tour de France – had the world at his feet, then ended up rock bottom in jail.
Years later he goes to Rwanda while the African nation is still dealing with the aftermath of the horrendous 1994 genocide. There, he trains young cyclists into a national team to compete on the world stage.
It’s only over the course of the film, narrated by Hollywood actor Forest Whitaker, that we get to understand the at times laconic Boyer and discover why he went to jail.
But as director TC Johnstone explains, not only was Boyer at first reluctant to even visit Rwanda, let alone live there – the cyclist didn’t even want to be in the documentary.
‘‘He didn’t want to make the film for three years. [But] he was stuck with us and then he started warming up to it over time. Recently we were at the United Nations and he said, ‘I didn’t want to make this film’. It’s the first time he’s ever admitted it. He is quite a stubborn chap and he said, ‘For three years I fought this film’.
‘‘To Jock’s defence I don’t know if I would want my life on film. He had gone through a dramatic past and had made some choices that were maybe not the most positive. But I was always fascinated.
‘‘What drew me to him is that he was going through this reconciliation story. You hear people in audiences go, ‘I’ve made a bunch of bad choices in my life that I’ve been hiding for years and I never thought I would be able to get back up from them. This film has given me a chance to know my life’s not over’.
‘‘When Jock hears that I’m like, ‘I told you, I told you’.’’
Johnstone has been making films for about 10 years and working on others, including as cinematographer on a documentary about the annual transcontinental Race Across America bicycle race. He knows bicycle builder Tom Ritchey, one of the inventors of the mountain bike. But Johnstone says he isn’t a competitive cyclist and didn’t even know much about cycling before Rising from Ashes.
He was, however, crucial in kick-starting Boyer’s move to Rwanda. ‘‘In 2005 I happened to be in Rwanda and a gentleman approached me by the name of Dan Cooper. He said, ‘Hey, I have an idea for a movie’. My first reaction is, ‘You and everybody else have an idea for a movie’.
‘‘But he said, ‘No, no, no. I brought my bike over and was on my $6000 mountain bike and I ended up in this race with this local guy on this 100lb [45kg] bike in rubber boots. I gave it all I had and he passed me and when he passed me I realised he had 50lb [22kg] of potatoes on the back of his bike – so I think there is cycling talent here’.’’
Johnstone says he and Cooper then had the same thought: everything they had read about