100 YEARS OF SKATING
Bell's Skating Rink in New Haven, Indiana has been a roller rink since 1926. For its 100th year we made the anniversary film, told by the family that runs it and the skaters who grew up on its floor.
Bell's Skating RinkPROJECT OVERVIEW
A hundred years is too long for one voice, so the film is built from many: the family that has run Bell's for 40 years, an owner who has watched the music go from pipe organs to records to CDs to computers, the skaters who grew up on its floor and the regulars who still come in on a Friday night. It starts with a dance hall in 1913 that became a skating rink in 1926, then the disco years with a line out the door, a speed skater who came home from the world championships having represented Bell's, and the one original thing the family will never touch, the bell sign. Every interview was shot in the rink under its own lights with the graffiti wall behind it, and the film closes on a floor full of skaters and the line the whole story comes back to: without the people, you don't have nothing. So thank you, and keep coming back.