He is finished, the film made for a hundred years of TT. From the end of next week the magic of the TT can be seen in cinemas throughout the Netherlands. “Very exciting everyone thinks,” says filmmaker Roy Ferwerda, who has nothing to do with motorbikes, but has enjoyed working on the film.
“Actually, I think it’s a shame that the movie is finished. I was looking forward to it every night when I went to bed again to work on it the next day,” Ferwerda looks back in the Radio Drenthe program Cassata. At most, my wife occasionally went crazy with the sound that came from above, the sound of engines. “
The film consists of historical images. From the very first TT in 1925 to the race weekend of last year, Ferwerda has mounted many thousands of images very quickly in succession into a hundred minutes film. Old and new walk together, black and white and color.
“This was exactly as I presented my idea to representatives of the TT,” Ferwerda looks back. Three parties were asked by the TT board to make a plan for a TT film. A film that captures the feeling of a hundred years of TT. One of those parties was Dutch Angle TV from The Hague. “I was called by the owner:” Do you have anything with motorbikes? “” Ferwerda didn’t have that. “But for the TV program other times I have sometimes made an episode about Zandvoort. No engines, but racing with cars. I immersed myself in the subject.”
Ferwerda visited the TT and tasted the atmosphere that hangs around it. “There I spoke with people and immersed myself in the atmosphere. That was already very nice. After that I started looking for old images. I started in the Drents Archief, at Sound and Vision, in the Groninger Archief and I have requested private films. That has become a very nice combination an event that has been around for a hundred years, that has been the same attraction since 1925.”
The whole history has been given a place in the Ferwerda film. “From the moment that the teams and fans come to the city, the campsites that fill themselves, the TT nights, also the notorious nights from the sixties and seventies. Of course the motorcycle inspections, as happened before, up to and including the exodus. It is not just racing, it’s a long weekend.”
In addition, large drivers from the present and the past also play a role. Egbert Streuer, Wil Hartog, Hans Spaan, Kevin Schwantz, Randy Mamola and Collin Veijer. “But also Valentino Rossi. It took a year and a half to get him in front of the camera, but we succeeded last month,” laughs the filmmaker. In addition, there are some portraits with volunteers and fans.
“That fascination for the TT, with volunteers and visitors, that fascination for motorsport, that is what I remembered the most. If you call it a circus, then you are really short of the event,” says Ferwerda. “It’s really special and that year in and year out.”
On Friday the film can be seen for the first time in the cinema. Whether he is completely finished? “There are actually no expressions of a hundred years of TT Assen,” the filmmaker is critical of his own work. “Maybe I will still update this TT. And then just next year as a enthusiast to the TT.”