Pour Un Maillot Jaune on at Bath Film Festival this Sunday

Cycling fans in the Bath area wanting to see how the Tour de France was staged in the days before multi-million euro team budgets, race radios, saturation TV coverage and Champs-Elysées finishes, get their chance this Sunday when Claude Lelouch’s classic Pour Un Maillot Jaune is screened as part of the Bath Film Festival.

The half-hour short, which uses both black-and-white and colour footage, follows the 1965 edition of the race and features riders such as Felice Gimondi and Raymond Poulidor, focusing as much on the daily routines surrounding the race and other views of the race from the inside as on the action on the road itself.

Entry is free, and the film will be screened in The Black Gazebo at Bath’s Green Park Station as part of an 80-minute sequence of shorts entitled Celluloid Games, sponsored by John’s Bikes, and running from 11.00am to 7.25pm.

Other films being shown include College, featuring silent comic genius Buster Keaton, the Argentine film Virile Games, which promises a rather dark take on a football match, and a documentary called Positive Ladies Soccer by the charity Medécins Sans Frontières.

There will also be video clips of parkour and skateboarding, and students from Bath Spa University will provide musical accompaniment to some of the features.