Hudson River Project

Round-the-world cycling champion and adventure junky James Bowthorpe reunites with filmmaker Antony Crook to launch their latest audacious endeavor: rowing a boat constructed from New York’s refuse down the 315-mile length of the Hudson River. Today’s trailer was filmed over the course of several scouting missions to chart a route from the waterway’s highest source at Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondack Mountains, down through the Hudson River Valley and into Manhattan. “We see cities as something separate from the wilderness, but the former evolved from the latter. I’m interested in the idea of how we set up these diametrically opposed state of minds,” Bowthorpe explains. “The Hudson River Project plays to this cyclic idea, charting the path that helped to build the megalopolis.” The full-length feature, which will be set to an original soundtrack by Scottish post-rock maestros Mogwai and starts filming this fall, will follow Bowthorpe collecting discarded materials and assembling his vessel before hauling the boat to the journey’s starting point on his bike. Having completed a similar journey along the Thames in London, the Hudson River’s long stretches of treacherous white water will pose new challenges for Bowthorpe, who has enlisted survival expert and outdoorsman Phil Wrigley to ghost him on the trip.

Visit our Facebook page for an exclusive album of photos by Antony Crook taken during the scouting missions.