Bate's Car: Sweet as a Nut
1974 · 15m · Canada
Directed by Tony Ianzelo
Genres: documentary
Tones: whimsical
Inventor Mr. Bate demonstrates how barnyard manure processed in his homemade digester yields methane gas potent enough to run his car, then shows a bicycle powered by bumps in the road.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 1974 doc about running a car on shit—literally—before anyone cared about climate or gave a grant for it; Ianzelo's deadpan faith in barnyard alchemy is the opposite of consensus cinema, and that bicycle powered by road bumps is proof that true weirdness needs no justification.
Positioned squarely in the lineage of British instructional documentary and DIY futurism, Ianzelo's measured demonstration carries the formal restraint of educational media while the subject matter quietly upends expectations of what that tradition could contain.
The film's singular choice—treating Bate's homespun inventions with the same earnest camera attention you'd give to industrial machinery—is what makes the improbable premise land; that tonal commitment transforms materials-and-ingenuity into something genuinely moving.