THE LAST RACE is a cinematic portrait of a Long Island stock car race track as its 87 year-old owners struggle to maintain an American racing tradition in the face of a real estate development boom. The film merges image and sound in a unique narrative form to bring the audience into the world of grassroots racing culture and explores a story that subtly grapples with questions of blue collar American identity that have taken on a profound relevance in the current political era.
YEAR 2018
CATEGORY Feature Documentary
COUNTRY U.S.A.
RUN TIME 75 min
LANGUAGE English
Awards and Nominations:
- Sundance 2018 - USA Documentary Competition & Nominee Grand Jury Prize
- Florida Film Festival 2018 - WINNER Special Jury Award - Artistic Vision
- Hamptons International Film Festival 2018 - Golden Starfish Award Nominee - Documentary Feature
- International Motor Film Awards 2019 - WINNER - Best Documentary Feature
Michael Dweck, director of Sundance favourite The Last Race answers some questions on the making of this seminal documentary. An evocative portrait of Long Island's last race track.
Conversation with Producer Director Michael Dweck on his first film, the feature doc The Last Race.
Episode #23
Michael Dweck is the director of the feature film, "The Last Race", a movie about the last oval track on Long Island, and the battle between those that want to keep racing and those that want to develop the property. Premiers Friday, Nov. 16.
Find out how one community on Long Island is trying to hold on to its past while staving off developers.
It's my creative effort to provide the audience with a singular emphatic experience as opposed to what documentaries typically do, which is give you information. I tried to have the audience become active participants and witnesses to the spirit of this place, the Raceway, and I hope they explore questions of blue collar American identity.
Whether he’s submerged in a Plexiglas box 40 feet underwater, or hanging onto the hood of a car on Havana’s busiest road, visual artist and photographer Michael Dweck has always found a new angle from which to document life.
We agreed this was going to be a cinematic portrait of a specific place, and the shots had to be either magical or mysterious. If they didn't meet that prerequisite, they didn't make the film. Another requirement was that there could be no repetition. We'd need to have moments of silence to breath, to stay, and to not cut a lot. If we had cuts, you wouldn't have time to observe this very particular world.
Radio interview with THE LAST RACE Director Michael Dweck
Listen to full interview
The director, Michael Dweck, is a fine art photographer, and we had been talking about collaborating on a project together for some time. He came to me with the idea of creating a film about a small stock car race track that was the last vestige of the Long Island racing culture that he experienced as a child.
On making his documentary debut with the story of the Riverhead Raceway in Long Island, the last of its kind.
Ethan interviews Director Michael Dweck of THE LAST RACE, a Sundance Film Festival documentary about Riverhead Raceway. For decades, this track has hosted showdowns between local residents in Mad Max style vehicles. Dozens of quarter-mile tracks just like that used to exist on Long Island - but now Riverhead is the last.
Sundance Film Festival 2018 - U.S. Documentary Competition: The Last Race
Meet Michael Dweck, director of The Last Race, which is playing in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
