Haut-Savoyard Kilian Bron, the true genius of mountain biking, reveals Fuego, his new video shot in South America, but also behind the scenes. This astonishing documentary will be previewed this Friday, February 3rd in Annecy to a packed house.
He is to mountain biking what Candide Thovex is to skiing: a freewheeling racer paired with an aesthete. Kilian Bron regularly sets the freeride planet on fire with polished videos in which his technical prowess transforms into artistic performance.
The last: Fuego, tour of South America. Kilian Bron bikes down a red sand dune with his friend Victor Broquedis, who accompanies him on skis.
“These are the highest dunes in the world in the Nazca region, Peru, at more than 2,000 meters above sea level, and we found dune faces that were more than 500 meters in height, it’s huge.”he explains.
“We stayed there for a few days because there were huge technical limitations: knowing how a ski slides in the sand, knowing how to adapt to the temperatures of the sand, a lot of things that had to be taken into account to make it work.
At the age of 31, Kilian Bron has been mountain biking “at least half of [sa] life”. The incredible videos of skier Candide Thovex fueled his imagination. He would now like to “Inspire” on the other hand a new generation of athletes/artists.
“I think mountain biking should be seen as a sliding sport: we see it a priori as two wheels rolling on dirt or snow, but actually, when we talk about riding, we always have both wheels sliding. It’s with really a balance to it. find and play with this slide to maintain your trajectories and driving”.
Always pushing technical performance a little further, the roper also abused his suspensions by riding the bike in La Paz on a hellish descent of stairs in an urban environment.
“It takes a lot of concentration and putting a little bit under the pedal. I know there are places where I go with 80% of what I know how to do. You can’t play with your limits in these places, especially when you add the population. We we block the roads, we block the entrance with our teams, but we’re still in areas where there are people, so we have to be careful. And then, we’re in La Paz in Bolivia, at almost 4,000 meters above sea level, so when you say altitude, it means that you are less clear-headed, you get tired more quickly”.
Kilian Bron admits that he has succeeded in combining his three passions: cycling, imaging and travel. So he constantly explores new playing fields and Slovenia seems to have put stars in his eyes. Just listen to him talk about it to be convinced.
“There’s a lot to do, outside, in the mountains, whether it’s running, cycling or otherwise. It’s a place that inspires me. I want to go back there.” he said smiling.
Haut-Savoyard actually wants to find out what is hidden in the Slovenian soil, after exploring its underground cavities. The mountain biker has realized every claustrophobic cyclist’s nightmare by traversing the narrow galleries of a disused mine.
“We start from a high point and go 400 meters down, so everything is done indoors, it’s quite atypical to have an entry point and an exit point. There are miles and miles of galleries.”.
“There’s a narrow side, you have to find the right angles of view, the right lens to give the image what I do. And there’s also the limitation of light, a technical limitation. It all means that you” you’re in a place where you don’t necessarily feel comfortable, you have the technical side which is complicated, but it’s more of an unusual and wonderful experience.”
Always go further. This is his leitmotif. Not only in the ideas for scenarios, the search for unusual places or technical tricks on the bike, but also in the creation of his images. Artistic research is nothing, according to him, if it does not have meaning, if it does not give place to the pride of the human being and encounters.
“We made our action videos four to six minutes maximum and there, the new chapter, these are documentaries related to these projects”he says.
The mountain bike genius, then, presents the Fuego this Friday, in cinemas, during a sold-out show-conference in Annecy. “There is what we show in the image and there is also what we experience on the spot”.
A way also to direct attention to his detached companions, who imagine all the sequences with him. They are nothing without him, he is nothing without them. These imaging virtuosos are able to pilot FPV (First Person View) drones as fast as it flies down the slopes. These tiny machines make it possible to shoot immersive aerial footage.
They follow the mountain biker when they don’t show him the way, like in this video shot in Turkey (see above).
In their videos, Kilian Bron and his teams do everything from A to Z, including music and sound effects. Sometimes it takes more than a year to complete a project, from the birth of the idea to the distribution of the film. “We show the fun and the beauty on the plunging face of the iceberg and then there’s everything underneath and that’s what most of my work represents.”
“Our three months in South America will be summed up in one hour of film. It’s a compilation of our strongest, most beautiful and least beautiful moments in life, all the people we met and that explain why I’m doing this “.
“Beyond consuming images to consume images, we want to tell something, we want to add substance to this story, and that’s what we’re going to do through this cinema session and this cinema-conference.”he concludes.