Long Island Roller Derby Lands at Cinema Arts Centre

Members of the all-female roller derby league, the Long Island Roller Rebels, barreled into Huntington Tuesday to watch the documentary "Brutal Beauty: Tales of the Rose City Rollers" at the . The award-winning film provides an in-depth look into the lives of the women who play the sport, why they love it, why they do it and why people are starting to watch it.

"If you are a people person it is a fabulous place to be," said Melville's Stuart Selkin, who was in the audience to see the movie with his wife, Pam. "What an eclectic crowd. You see 90-year-old women there doing their knitting, then you see the younger people with all the piercings. And then you see a grandfather there with his grandkids." 

Uniforms complete with fishnet stockings are only part of the story. Each player has given herself a nickname befitting her attitude while playing the sport. The women also become a team in more ways then one.

"The community is the best part of doing this. It's like getting 60 brand new friends overnight," said Lindsay Estes, 22, of Bellmore, who is known as Vixxen Bone on the track.

She played for one year before missing this last season due to a knee injury. She was introduced to the sport by her older sister, Jill, also known as J-Bone, who will be the league's new president when the new season starts in March.

"The league is run for the skaters by the skaters," J-Bone, 29, said. "We all work together to see that it works. You kind of get immersed in the world and the whole life that comes with it." 

A roller derby bout consists of two 30 minute periods. Each team sends five people on the the track, a jammer who is identifiable by the star on her helmet, and four blockers. The leader of the pack -- the pivot, visible with a stripe on her helmet -- controls the speed of the pack. The object is for the jammer to go around all four members of the other team as many times as she can without getting knocked down. The blockers' job is to protect their jammer while trying to knock out the opposing one. The jammer who passes the most opponents gets the most points and her team wins.

"The first time I saw roller derby I was a kid and I had no idea about the rules," said CAC member and Huntington resident Peter Kirsch, who came to see the movie with his wife, Candy. "But seeing the girls rolling around and knocking each other over looked like a lot of fun."  

The style of the Rebels' uniforms, especially their pink and black color combination, are reminiscent of the first era when female roller derby was all the rage-the 1950s. The popularity of roller skating helped the sport's popularity surge again in the 1970s. In 2001 the start of a team in Austin, Texas brought the sport back again. That "sparked the female derby movement that has now spread across the United States, one tough woman at a time," according to the website of that team, the Texas Rollergirls. The sport was even the subject of a Hollywood movie in 2009 directed by Drew Barrymore called "Whip It".

"That movie was beautifully done," J-Bone said.

Officially known as flat track derby, the sport is governed by the Women's Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA). The Texas team's website describes the sport as extreme skating with a theatrical flair, but Vixxen Bone had her own description of the sport.

"It's like a combination of ice speed skating and football," Vixxen Bone said.

The "Brutal Beauty" documentary, winner of this year's Festival Director's Choice Award at the Indie Spirit Film Festival and the Programmer's Choice Award at the 2010 Crossroads Film Festival, gives viewers a behind the scenes look at a league in Oregon, the Rose City Rollers. Followed by cameras for a year and a half, the players are given the chance to make viewers understand why they cannot help but participate in the sport, despite how brutal and dangerous it is. One of the players in the film, Marollin' Monroe, seemed to sum up the reason rather concisely for all the players, both on screen and off:  "The universe wanted me to be a roller girl and I obliged it."