Quidditch World Cup documentary crowdfunded
After a successful Indiegogo campaign, Triple Hoops Films had successfully funded Fly the Movie: Journey to Frankfurt, a documentary which will follow Team UK to the Quidditch World Cup in Germany.
Created by a team duo from Leeds, the documentary hopes to cover the sport in much the same way that Mudbloods did on the USA, only from the perspective of the UK. Triple Hoops Films hopes to finish the film by the end of the year.
The documentary will follow Team UK from early 2016 – where many compete in the British Quidditch Cup – through their training in Durham and Oxford, to the Quidditch World Cup in July. From this perspective, the movie will explore the harsh training of the sport, to the open and kind-hearted nature of the community, to the question of whether quidditch can be treated as a legitimate sport.
Caroline Taylor and Jennie Grimes were excited about the campaign’s success:
“I was speechless when we reached our target – I’m so proud to be a part of a community that can come together to support something like this. Hopefully our film can inspire everyone to get active and get involved in Quidditch. We can’t wait to get stuck into making the bulk of the film in the coming months, especially in Frankfurt in July.”
Recently the team had come to the British Quidditch Cup, the country’s main tournament where all thirty-two teams in the UK compete for the title of champions. The best players of these teams are then selected for the Team UK squad, who then fly to Frankfurt to play in the Quidditch World Cup against the best players in the world. The community had been expanding rapidly year-on-year, garnering interest from the media on the tournament.
Quidditch is a full contact, mixed gender, co-ed sport adapted from the game played in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It is a high octane game combining aspects of different sports like handball, rugby and dodgeball. These diverse elements make quidditch a challenging and physical sport to play. From an outsider’s perspective, the game can appear chaotic and confusing, however, with a grasp of the rules, it becomes an incredibly exciting sport to take part in and spectate.
A quidditch team consists of 21 athletes with 7 players per team on the field at any one time. Each player has a broom between their legs. The four maximum rule of quidditch states that at most four players on the pitch at any one time can be of the same gender. This ensures that the game is mixed gender and inclusive to all.
Further details of the campaign can be found here.
