Risk! Danger! Supreme skill! Independence! Confidence boosting! Bonding! Social impact! Global Community!
Bike Movies Fest Shows Many Dimensions of Bike Power, Vividly Portrayed
Audience Adds to Excitement with Shouts and Murmurs of Recognition, Empathy
Supportive Leadership of Steve Vaccaro Saluted by Founder and Applauded
A forest of bikes outside the Unitarian Church showed who the main audience was for the selection of many shorts and some long movies about bikers around the world shown there last night, in dozens of well executed portrayals of bikers and their worlds which had been carefully chosen by a panel of three from a thousand watched from December through April. Maybe that sounds laborious but as one of the judges, the festival producer Mandy, said, “the process is rather like dating”, in that winners and losers are quickly identified, and the real work is choosing “according to the themes we want to present.”
We caught 18 shorts in the last two programs from 8pm onwards, all of them vivid and dynamic presentations with themes to do with how serious biking brings health, confidence, recognition, bonding, community, social responsibility and reform, and even cash among many blessings even in countries with limited early participation such as Nigeria and Nepal, not to mention the danger of crashes, injuries and inevitably some deaths that go along with speeding with very little protection..
As can still be glimpsed at BicycleFilmFestival in the BFF 2018 COMPILATION on the front page there were indelible images galore from Canons and GoPros closely following rash bikers going all out in fast traffic hanging on to the sides and backs of trucks and SUVs, racing through lethal gaps between buses and vans without pausing, turning sharply and slipping past cars cutting them off with deadly carelessness, stopping dead so that the bike can be climbed like a standing sculpture, driving backwards and forwards up and down hills with the front wheel at right angles (No Rest Dir Matt Reyes), speeding through crowded city alleys or hurtling through woods and over rocks and down mountains with sheer abandon, and much other evidence that competitive foolhardiness in bikers reaches extremes to match the powered skateboarders who race down Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side through Lexington and Third Avenue cross lights as if protected by the Gods from inevitable self destruction.
Not that the videos left out the crashes and spills that bikers suffer in “the most dangerous sport of all” (Tenzin Dir Bob Blankemeier) which it seems their poor mothers often feel should be secondary to studying and looking for a job, including one in Nepal who desperately sold her teen son’s precious first bike for scrap but was unable to stop him welding pipes together to build another, on which he founded a career in cycle acrobatics and racing which saw him soon earn three times the most his parents had ever been paid (RJ Ripper Dir Joey Schusler).
But beyond all the fearless tempting of fate and tricks of consummate skill such as climbing half a tall wall as part of a show off trip around Lagos in Nigeria (Lagos BMX Crew Dir Fraser Byme) there were all the ways in which biking is enhancing and liberating the lives of young men and increasingly women (“Most people are more capable than they realise – we teach them to kick ass on a bike. We change their lives forever!” Ride Like A Girl Dir Jon Lynn) who might have no other worthwhile outlet for their energy and adventurism. All over the world it seems that expert biking is bringing social benefits to enhance the whole lives of dedicated participants. One group in London gets youths to put away their knives and join in biking to leave gang warfare behind (Knives Down Bikes Up Dir Dir Mike Dempsey).
Thus Nigerians pursuing BMX skills like climbing walls say “It makes me feel anything is possible! We have BMX to express our feelings. I feel real.” (Lagos BMX Crew Dir Fraser Byme); Indians find their city of Delhi beneath their pedals can be explored with unlimited scope – (“ganja cant show you the city, push the pedals and let your childhood take over!” Jimmy Jimmy Dir Anuj Khurana), and New Yorkers find independence and even international recognition in the bike messenger cultural scene (“I am not going to let the system stop me from doing what I want to do” – Speedwalking NYC Dir Matt Sezer)
Perhaps the most heroic figure of the night was Jacques Houotis, the 82 year old Frenchman who seemingly had nine lives and had broken every bone in his body at one time or another but surmounted all obstacles with merry laughter, supreme optimism and a catch phrase “No Problem” he’d use after every painful spill, attempted murder, heart attack and near drowning (caught in a car underwater he nearly gave up but his hand finally found the window lowering handle and his rescuers were able to press the water out of his lungs – “No Problem!”) who is just as Gung Ho at 82 to leap into the saddle and shoot off down a steep and snowy mountain side as he has been all his life, not to mention as likely to kiss or be kissed by every woman in his vicinity (The Frenchy Dir Michelle Smith). After all his close calls, he said, “everything I do is a bonus!”
In comments after the showings filmmakers expressed their appreciation of the risks involved in pushing bikes to the limit in traffic or mountainside but admired the achievement imnvolved nonetheless. “Yeah people risk their lives all the time but the worst last day of their lives won’t be meeting the person they could have been.” There was also blame for drivers: “Something I really fucking hate is losing friends to careless drivers”. White memorial bikes mark the deaths of bikers in New York City where 27 were killed in 2017. and there is a site at www.ghostbikes.org listing them (Fight To Live A Cyclist Story Dir Kenneth Sousie) But riding which can be “the loneliest thing in the world” is also the freest way to go or as one woman put it in that same video “I thought why am I getting paid nothing to sit behind a desk when I can get paid nothing and be on my bike!”
In a wrap up at the end the founder of the ever burgeoning festival Brendt Barbur said it was the best so far in 19 years and paid tribute to the lawyer Steve Vaccaro for his growing role in leading the biking community in New York as well as his role in fighting for compensation for bikers hurt and sometimes killed on their vulnerable trips around the city. But sometimes the injuries come without anyone to blame. We sat next to a young Jeff and his wife Canzia both cyclists who had had to deal with a faceplant by Jeff onto a road which had ruined his jaw and front teeth which had been very well repaired at Bellevue so no traces of the accident remained.
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Bike Movie Fest Coming Up
Are you a fanatic, obsessive or plain appreciator of the virtues of getting on a bike and finding the exhilarating freedom and scope involved in peddling two wheels over city roads and mountain landscapes?
Make haste and attend the upcoming 19th Annual Bicycle Film Festival of 2019 at various venues including the First Unitarian Church 119 Pierrepont St Brooklyn for the mammoth screening of films on June 15 Sat (6 to Borough Hall and walk).
One sponsor we hear who is supporting the festival is the noted law firm of Vaccaro and White, of active cyclists Steve Vaccaro and Adam White. The remarkably athletic Vaccaro like his partner is an urban and international cyclist whose legal talents in acting for cyclists in New York City, and winning them compensation when they are the undeserving victims of accidents caused by dangerous drivers and other road hazards, are celebrated by his clients and feared by the companies he sues on their behalf.
Among the offerings:
COLOMBIA – CYCLING OBSESSION
Colombia, UK 2018 11 min.
Dir. Flavia Cappellini, Mike Deppe
The country has a secret obsession: its love for road cycling. Featuring Colombian cycling legends Rigoberto Urán, Lucho Herrera, Cochise Rodríguez, Luis Fernando Saldarriaga and Raúl Mesa
THE IMPOSSIBLE RIDE
USA 2019 16 min.
Dir. Eben Hall
Who is the fastest cyclist on the planet? She is a woman named Denise Mueller. Great Big Story presents her journey to beat the land speed world record on a bicycle of both men and women.
I’M NOT STOPPING
Switzerland 2018 15 min.
Dir. Rugile Kaladyte
Lael Wilcox won the Trans Am Bike Race across the United States overall. She races her first ultra-endurance competition in Europe, the Navad1000, a 1000-kilometer-long self-supported mountain bike race that climbs 30,000 meters and crosses nearly the entire country of Switzerland
MOTHERLOAD
USA 2019 86 min.
Dir. Liz Canning
On her quest for a deeper connection in an increasingly isolated and digital world, director Liz Canning found an answer in cargo bikes. She shares this experience while exploring sustainability, consumption, and how something as simple as a bike can reshape ideas about transportation and freedom.
COLOMBIA – CYCLING OBSESSION
Colombia, UK 2018 11 min.
Dir. Flavia Cappellini, Mike Deppe
The country has a secret obsession: its love for road cycling. Featuring Colombian cycling legends Rigoberto Urán, Lucho Herrera, Cochise Rodríguez, Luis Fernando Saldarriaga and Raúl Mesa