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In this documentary over ten
women are chosen to make a commentary on female athletic performance.
Over a period of 2 seasons, HARDIHOOD examines female downhill mountain
bike racers. Beginning with Monday and ending on Sunday; animation's,
weather reports, and the girls daily process, honor the seven successive
days (1 week). Marla Streb, Missy Giove, and Elke Brutsaert are three
of the headlined competitors. Jen Klish, a featured character in the
film, provides a contrast to the sponsored corporate riders. Her 50
hour workweek, and increasing ambivalence with competition, leave
Klish retired from racing to pursue her profession as a bike mechanic.
One year later, Klish is the sole female mechanic on the race circuit
wrenching for pro racer, Lisa Sher. Jacquie Phelan provides the history
of the sport. Along with a handful of Marin County Cyclists she founded
NORBA in 1982, then won three national championships. Older than ever,
Phelan presides as the "Wombat Dowager" in the Women's Mountain
Bike and Tea Society (WOMBATS). queenBea uses these stories to tell
a greater untold story - that of the female athletic spirit. |
| Filmmaker, Nicole Mackinlay Hahn,
was born in 1972. It was that same year that Title IX was passed;
a ruling that required schools to provide equal funding for women's
sports. "Eighteen years later, I was a senior varsity lacrosse
player getting shuttled on a bus to an isolated playing field where
my team could practice. Meanwhile, the men's team practiced and competed
on "home turf", where the town's community, students, and
faculty could celebrate their season." High Schools and Colleges
still have separate "off campus" playing fields for women.
This discrimination endures many athletic departments in the country,
and parallels the under representation of female athletes in the media. |
| What's going on here? Over 90,000 people flocked to the final game of the Women's World Cup. The Women's National Basketball Association averaged almost 11,000 fans per game last year, and that's up 12 percent this season. Even the Women's Pro Softball League recently got better TV ratings than a (men's) Major League Soccer game shown during the same time slot. How come American sports fans' fascination with female athletes has shifted from skirted skaters (Dorothy Hamill, Michelle Kwan) and tiny teenage tumblers (Mary Lou Retton, Kerri Strug) to rough muscular women in their 20s and 30s who grunt, grimace and heave each other aside with their hips? Are we simply wild over their athletic brilliance? Or does the popularity of women's team sports tell us something deeper about how female athletes and fans are redefining themselves, what they really want and who they might become? - Mariah Burton Nelson (Newsweek, July 19, 1999) |
| Although "women in sport"
is popular, the current media landscape is small. The recent media
coverage of extreme sports has encouraged networks to take further
risks. The focus is shifting from the profiling of superstars, to
honoring the attitudes and lifestyles of adventure sports and outdoor
enthusiasts. With experience as a production assistant for the official
film producers of the US ski team and Olympic games, queenBea found
the media representations of the mountain bike sport to be "male
riders flipping over handle bars to the same old tune." Although
there is some mountain bike coverage syndicated on sports networks,
their images are live and cover less than 30% of the female riders.
Videos distributed within the mountain bike industry, feature men,
and lack character development, emotion, and narration. These typical
representations provoke Nicole Mackinlay Hahn. queenBea's motivation
to undertake this video project, HARDIHOOD spawned from the need to
tell a story unlike the current media portrayals. |
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