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During the last week of May, the annual Bike Film Festival launched the first run of its 2008 world tour in New York City. This year the Festival travels to 17 major cities around the world including Tokyo, London, San Francisco and Paris. A celebration of all things bicycle and the culture that surrounds bike riding, there is something for everyone regardless whether you are a Critical Mass urban messenger type, serious road racer, micro-brew drinking mountain biker, tourist with panniers and box of maps, or an anti car person reducing your carbon foot print by getting bread and milk in a homemade basket you rigged up on the back of your bike. As a result, the film festival is more than just a chance to be entertained by films centered around the bike. It’s a chance to hang out (which we know is one of the things cyclist do best) discuss big ideas, look at art, drink at cutting edge bars, tool around in the streets of cool cities and be a hipster for a day.
I stumbled upon the festival on the internet a couple of years ago (probably at one of my jobs where I couldn’t leave my desk and was forced to seek out adventures vicariously through the web like some futuristic human devoid of contact with the real world, but that’s for another blog). Impressed by the whole idea, I added attending the bike film fest on my life list (This one seemed slightly more achievable than winning the Pulitzer prize for poetry) And since I am currently shooting a mountain bike documentary which I would like to enter in the 2009 festival, I figured this would be a good year to check it out.
Since flying to Tokyo seemed out of my price range at the moment, I found myself on Saturday, May 31 on a 10:30 a.m. Martz bus heading to the Anthology Film Archives an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video with a particular focus on American independent and avant-garde cinema and its precursors found in classic European, Soviet and Japanese film n New York City where the festival was occurring. I had a ticket for the the 5:00 p.m. screening which involved several shorts and a main feature called What Bobby Saw, a documentary on a legally blind mountain biker. (I guess I really don’t have any excuses for not riding)
I figured I should check out the street festival that runs from 1:00-7:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m. is the main screening and an after party at Love, a club on MacDougal Street with apparently the best sound system in the city. But as much as I would love to hang out in New York City till the week hours of Sunday morning, I have to catch a 9:00 p.m. bus.
The street was blocked of in front of the Anthology Film Archives, an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video. at 32 2nd Ave. which is across from the famous New York Marble Cemetery where many famous citizens are buried. People have stacked their bikes along its wrought iron fence. The whole street is like a giant installation piece. There are the usual type vendors and bike advocates scattered around touting there wares along with a DJ blasting tunes. As one could guess, there are bikes everywhere, and a variety of people to match. It is a cross section of old, young black white, yuppie and hippie, although the crowd definitely is labeled more of an off beat crowd. Lots of tattoos: from the a girl natural type with the honey blonde hair and Chinese symbols tattooed on her back to a guy whose whole right arm is decked out with blood red roses and thorns. There are guys wearing t-shirts that say things like, Tour de drugs juxtaposed next to people in racing jerseys and cycling caps. All kinds of bags, beat up colorful shoes, dyed hair and dreadlocks. And of course a variety of bikes parade around the streets. A few guys try to out do each other with tricks and turns. There is even a bicycle beauty contest with men and women a like parading their bike and themselves around in a circle before three judges.
At 5:00 p.m. I left the party in the street and ducked in to see the feature. There were few opening shorts which range from a story about a guy who makes whiskey and rides a fixed gear mountain bike to a tongue-in-cheek horror piece about a monster in the woods. The films aren’t necessarily exceptional works of art, but there is an intoxicating feeling of seeing them together and having a diverse group of bicycle stories one after the other. The main feature, The Way Bobby Sees was gripping as you watched a man with severe visual impairment (he can only see outlines of shapes and light) and two replaced kidneys race in the Downieville Classic, an incredibly tough course with drop offs, cliffs and rocky terrain. This was an inspirational nail biter.
The 7:00 p.m. show was sold out and as I left the Anthology Film Archives a crowd wound down the stairs and out around the block. There were people from all over the world attending this event and I was happy to have experienced a small part. It made me stop for a moment and be grateful that I am able to be part of a world wide cycling movement.
If the bicycle represents anything it is freedom. The freedom to move, to express and to be. Perhaps some might argue a car offers greater mobility, but as we all know a car can become a prison. It robs us of our freedom as we spend more hours sitting and commuting. It removes us from the landscape. It detaches us from our bodies as we find ourselves driving three blocks to the store. Cars may be necessary but they are not necessarily a choice. The bicycle on the other hand offers us another way of being. It is transportation, it is recreation, it is a return to our inner child, and it is bucking the system and creating alternative ways to live. In essence it is a lifestyle to be celebrated.
For more information check out: www.bicyclefilmfestival.org. Contact this writer poetic_stage@yahoo.com.
-M
