A year's worth of work for many riders comes down to one day, the Little 500 Race. Thomas Miller, IU alumnus and director of the film “One Day in April," set out to capture the process student riders go through from the start of the year through race day.
IU Cinema held a showing of the film for its 10 year anniversary Wednesday. The event began with a showing of an episode from the docuseries “Two Days in April” which was made by Media School students last year and goes behind the scenes of the race. The screening at the IU Cinema ended with a Q&A with Miller.
The film “One Day in April” follows several Little 500 teams as they make their way through the spring series to the big race in 2013. The film opens with a brief rewind through the history of previous races and then begins to introduce the main teams.
“We were almost, like, nervous that if we didn’t follow multiple teams, that nothing would happen,” Miller said. “That was a very silly thing to worry about because the film is not really about who wins the race.”
Miller said that the filmmakers were much more interested in why riders participate in the race: why would somebody dedicate so much time and so much pain in something that is largely not an investment in their future? He said he wanted to learn about who people were and what motivated them.
“Why do people commit so much energy and like, emotional investment into something that basically is an IU centric thing?” Miller said. “Like, you don’t go pro in Little 500.”
They didn’t want the film to feel like it was all about the history of the event, Miller said during the Q&A. That’s why they focused on the riders. He said the filmmakers wanted the film to be authentic to the riders in the 2013 race, but he also hoped it would resonate with other people and show them a little bit about what’s so inspiring about the race and the tradition.
“After one of the premiere screenings this elderly woman, who was very old, came down to me and was like, ‘This movie perfectly captured what my experience was like watching the race in the ‘50s,’” Miller said. “And I was like floored by that, I mean this was an elderly woman who had been at like the beginning of the race.”
10 years later, the film demonstrates the timelessness of the Little 500 tradition. As Miller reflected on the anniversary during the Q&A, he was reminded of how beautiful it is to be young and excited about creating something new.
“I definitely took away pride that I’m a part of this, but it’s not just me, it’s a huge community and many communities before this one,” Paul Lee, senior and current Black Key Bulls bike team member said. “And I just think it’s really cool that it comes full circle.”
Lee said he went to the showing to get ready for the race and to feel proud of the tradition. The film depicts the ups and downs riders experience along their journey to the Little 500 and combines stories from both women’s and men’s teams.
“I thought it was really cool how they did the finish of the race, how they ended the men's and women's race by switching back and forth,” Lee said. “I thought that was a really unique touch.”
The final moments of both the men's and women's races would cut back and forth between each other during the film, the race finally comes to an end, with some teams celebrating and others embracing in heartbreak. Miller said the effect was so one story wouldn’t finish before the other.
“This entire thing was about building trust,” Peter Stevenson, IU alumnus and writer and executive producer of the film, said. “It’s one thing to go in and capture beautiful images of what's going on at the track, but it’s another things to connect with people on a level where they’re willing to share their struggles, where they’re willing to share their victories and where they’re willing to let you inside of some of the most emotionally and physically taxing things that they do.”
Stevenson said watching the film 10 years later, he noticed all the little mistakes where he thought things could have been done differently. On the contrary, he also noticed many moments where he thought “Oh, we really nailed that.”
“There’s a moment at the end of the Individual Time Trials where one of the guy’s coaches right at the end turns to the camera and says ‘disappointing,’ and tonight you can hear the entire room just like ‘oof,’” Stevenson said. “It just hits you in the chest, and I had kind of forgotten some of the emotion that goes into it.”
Kirsten Powell, IU alumna who graduated in 2012 and producer of the film, said capturing the spirit of the race was important, given she was a rider herself for Delta Gamma. Each year some of the jersey colors stay the same, but the teams wearing them differ based on how they did in the spring series and after a while you don’t know who the riders are, she said.
“Watching the film tonight just drops me back into that moment in time, I got really emotional multiple scenes,” Powell said. “One of the coaches in the film was sitting with me and during it we were both you know crying, gasping, laughing. We know how the race ends and we’re still sweating and gripping our seats and getting nervous for everybody because you attach to the emotion of it.”
The film was released to YouTube for the first time on Wednesday night at the time of the showing. The 2025 Little 500 race begins with the women’s race at 4 p.m. Friday and the men’s race at 2 p.m. Saturday.
