The Pillion
A Duquesne professor debunks motorcycle culture stereotypes in this fascinating documentary.
May 1 @ 7:00 pm
What does a biker look like? That’s the question driving the latest documentary in The Lindsay Theater and Cultural Center’s Emerging Filmmakers Showcase series.
What started out as director Michela Hall’s Duquesne University thesis project eventually became The Pillion: An Exploratory Project Analyzing Gender Roles Through American Motorcycle Culture. Hall talked to motorcycle enthusiasts and experts in the Pittsburgh and New Jersey areas in an effort to debunk stereotypes surrounding this relatively niche community.
The Pillion will play exclusively at The Lindsay on Thursday, May 1, at 7 p.m. Hall, motorcycle rider and builder Jessika Janene, and other subjects from The Pillion will participate in a Q&A after the screening. A reception will follow in The Lindsay’s Community Room. Tickets are free, but RSVPs are recommended in advance due to space limitations.
Hall, who teaches media design and photography at Duquesne, also serves as a content manager and production lead for YaJagoff Media. She began riding motorcycles about five years ago.
The Pillion—which derives its name from a motorcycle’s passenger seat—was inspired by an incident that occurred while Hall was getting her bike serviced. A sales representative was obviously paying more attention to Hall’s male friend. She had to remind the sales rep three times that the bike in question was hers.
“Are other riders experiencing this?” Hall remembers wondering. “Are other women experiencing this?”
She created an online survey to find bikers willing to participate in a documentary and ended up receiving about 300 responses. Her goal was always to find folks of various genders, ages and riding styles. The Pillion features interviews with a wide range of bikers, dealership owners, gender studies professors and the owner of motorcycle travel company RawHyde Adventures.
Hall hopes The Pillion will inspire viewers to “interrogate your own assumptions about people.”
“These are your neighbors and community members,” Hall says. “These are people you could meet every day who happen to belong to this subculture. It’s just an interesting perspective on how automatic our biases are. I want people to walk away and think, ‘I never thought of it that way!’”
