Riding the Rails (1997)
• January 1st, 1997 • 1h 12min
Documentary
Overview
Riding the Rails offers a visionary perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great Depression. The filmmakers relay the experiences and painful recollections of these now-elderly survivors of the rails. Forced to travel more by economic necessity than the spirit of adventure, the film's subjects dispel romantic myths of a hobo existence and its corresponding veneer of freedom. Riding the Rails recounts the hoboes' trade secrets for survival and accounts of dank miseries, loneliness, imprisonment, death, and dispossession. Sixty years later, the filmmakers transport their subjects back to the tracks, where the surging impact of sound and movement resuscitates memories of a shattered adolescence and devastating rite of passage.
Make sure to check your pop-up blocker!!
Trailer
Similar Movies
Olympic Pride, American Prejudice
Released on: 2016-08-05
Documentary, History
In 1936, 18 African American athletes dubbed the "black auxiliary" by Hitler defied Nazi Aryan Supre...
Dawn of the Nazis
Released on: 2017-01-01
Documentary, History, TV Movie
How Germany was when its people entered the nightmare of World War II? Despair and fear lead a hungr...
The Money Masters
Released on: 1996-01-01
History, Documentary
A documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the...
Landauer: Gefeiert, verbannt, vergessen
Released on: 2014-09-18
Documentary
Documentary about Kurt Landauer, the long-time Jewish president of FC Bayern München, who led the cl...
Wake of '38
Released on: 1978-09-21
Documentary
Personal experiences of Northwest Ohio residents during the January 1978 blizzard that disrupted dai...
The Olympic Dream: 1936 Nazi Games
Released on: 2016-01-11
Documentary, History
Leni Riefenstahl's flamboyant Nazi aesthetics shaped the public image of the 1936 Olympics. Never be...
World's Greatest Logging Site
Released on: 1938-02-01
Documentary
A documentary short on logging during winter season.
Cycle of Memory
Released on: 2022-07-18
Documentary
Mel Schwartz escaped the Great Depression on a bicycle adventure he'd remember for the rest of his l...
Living the Utopia
Released on: 1997-11-08
Documentary, History
A retrospective look at the anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-communist experience in Spain from 1930 ...
Experiment Stuka
Released on: 2018-11-08
Documentary, History
Spanish Civil War, May, 1938. Four villages in Castellón, Benassal, Albocàsser, Ares del Maestrat an...
Will It Happen Again?
Released on: 1948-05-15
Documentary, History
An account of Adolf Hitler's rise and fall, his relationship with Eva Braun and their days of leisur...
38
Released on: 2006-09-01
Documentary
Documentary on the massacres commited in the Dersim region in Turkey in 1937/38.
Eliot Ness vs. Al Capone
Released on: 2009-03-29
Documentary, History, TV Movie
January, 1947. The public receives the news of Al Capone's death with indifference, although twenty ...
Nanking
Released on: 2007-02-10
Documentary, Drama, History
The story of the rape of Nanking, one of the most tragic events in history. In 1937, the invading Ja...
Legends in Light: The Photography of George Hurrell
Released on: 1995-01-16
Documentary
The life and career of legendary Hollywood glamour portrait photographer George Hurrell is profiled ...
The Hitler–Stalin Pact
Released on: 2019-01-02
Documentary, History, TV Movie
How could Hitler and Stalin, sworn ideological enemies, come to a secret pact in 1939? The captivati...
The Imperial Lullaby
Released on: 2020-03-21
Documentary, History
The armies of Fascist Italy conquered Addis Ababa, capital of Abyssinia, in May 1936, thus culminati...
1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year
Released on: 2009-07-02
Documentary, TV Movie
This documentary focuses on 1939, considered to be Hollywood's greatest year, with film clips and in...