Riding the Rails (1997)
72 min
Riding the Rails offers a visionary perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great Depression. The filmmakers relay the experiences and painful recollections of these now-elderly survivors of the rails. Forced to travel more by economic necessity than the spirit of adventure, the film's subjects dispel romantic myths of a hobo existence and its corresponding veneer of freedom. Riding the Rails recounts the hoboes' trade secrets for survival and accounts of dank miseries, loneliness, imprisonment, death, and dispossession. Sixty years later, the filmmakers transport their subjects back to the tracks, where the surging impact of sound and movement resuscitates memories of a shattered adolescence and devastating rite of passage.
- Release date
- January 1, 1997
- Country of origin
- United States
Cast
- C.R. 'Tiny' Boland as Self
- Charley Bull as Self
- Rene Champion as Self
- Peggy De Hart as Self
- John Fawcett as Self
- Clarence Lee as Self
- Jim Mitchell as Self
- Arvel 'Sunshine' Pearson as Self
- James San Jule as Self
- Bob 'Guitar Whitey' Symmonds as Self
Crew
- Lexy Lovell · Director
- Michael Uys · Director
- Lexy Lovell · Writer
- Michael Uys · Writer
- Lexy Lovell · Producer
- Michael Uys · Producer
- Jay Sherman-Godfrey · Composer
- Samuel M. Henriques · Cinematographer
- Howard Sharp · Editor