30 minutes to make you hate your commute forever.
Pierluca Rossi's Lungo La Pista Dei Contrabbandieri (1990) is an adventure documentary about a mountain bike crossing of the 700 km between the towns of Tamarasset and Djanet in the southern Algerian Sahara, from the Hoggar mountain range to the Tassili n'Ajjer. This crossing, supported by a 4x4 truck and a motorcycle, and never before undertaken by bicycle, emphasizes the rediscovered dimension of slowness, similar to the caravans of the Tuareg, in contrast to the unnatural speed of mechanized desert travel in the 1990s, which was considered the norm at the time due to the distorted image provided by the Paris-Dakar Rally and other similar events.
Cinematography
90s grain makes the Sahara feel illegally intimate.
Direction
Rossi's voiceover: part poet, part madman.
Director
Pierluca Rossi
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during Algeria's 'Black Decade' of civil war—Rossi's team crossed a country foreigners were fleeing.
The Paris-Dakar Rally Rossi despises was rerouted through Algeria in 1992; by 2008, terrorism killed it entirely.
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