XL MOVIES

Bicycle film fest comes to Austin

Roll Film: The Bicycle Film Festival makes its first visit to Austin. Thank Lance.

By Ian Dille
SPECIAL TO THE STATESMAN
Thursday, September 18, 2008

Austin's bike culture comes in many forms. It congregates at coffee shops in the twilight of weekend mornings as cyclists, clad in spandex and sporting multithousand-dollar machines, ride out to the rolling countryside. Bike culture is espoused by solo explorers traversing the Barton Creek Greenbelt aboard knobby-tired mountain bikes. It defines Austin cool, roving the town on fixed gears, searching for the hippest new hangout. Bike culture rolls up its pant leg and rides from home to work, then back.

No matter if you ascribe to one, multiple or none of Austin's varied bike cultures, this weekend's Bicycle Film Festival will appeal to you. The Bicycle Film Festival started eight years ago, shortly after its founder, Brendt Barbur, was hit by a New York City bus while riding his bike. Barbur didn't have the resources or will to pursue a legal fight, nor did he believe it would result in any meaningful change. Instead, he decided to create something that would raise awareness for cyclists in a positive and engaging way. The Bicycle Film Festival has grown into a 17-city worldwide tour, visiting Tokyo, Zurich, Toronto, San Francisco, and Portland, Ore., among others, and selling out nearly everywhere it goes.

"Of all the places that want the festival, Austin has been the most enthusiastic," Barbur says of the Bicycle Film Festival's first foray to the Lone Star state. Of course, it doesn't hurt that much of that enthusiasm comes from Austin's most recognized cyclist, Lance Armstrong. With the opening of his new downtown bike shop, Mellow Johnny's, Lance and company sought to create a place where the many disparate bike cultures could co-mingle. To aid in achieving that vision, Armstrong set up a meeting with Barbur in New York and asked him to bring the Bicycle Film Festival to Texas.

"For us, the point of working to bring the Bicycle Film Festival here was to unify and display all the cultural aspects around riding bikes," says Armstrong's right-hand man and Mellow Johnny's general partner, Bart Knaggs. "Instead of getting into these little exclusionary clicks, we wanted to bring everyone together. Whether you're a roadie, a mountain biker, a commuter or you're into the fixed gear scene, it's all still a bike. Eventually people start crossing over and exploring different areas of cycling."

Nathan Wilkes, who directed, filmed and produced Austin's own festival submission, "Tandemonium," agrees. "I think that everyone riding a bike on the streets of Austin is bound by knowing that we have something figured out. It gets you from point A to B quickly and reliably. It promotes a healthy lifestyle, and doesn't release poisonous materials into the air and water. Plus, it's enjoyable, cheap, and empowering," says Wilkes, an engineer for the City of Austin's bicycle program and fervent volunteer at Austin's Yellow Bike Project.

"Deep down, I think there is a kind of desperation and plea in the joyous celebration of bike culture at events like the Bicycle Film Festival. It's an effort at evangelism to let the world know that there is a solution," Wilkes says.

In Austin, Barbur plans to screen many of the festival's greatest hits, collections of short films that range from formal documentaries to avant-garde animation. Though every film involves bicycles in one way or another, many transcend the confines of cycling. The bicycle simply becomes a vehicle to showcase the artistry of the filmmaker. Indoctrination into Austin's bike culture isn't needed to enjoy the Bicycle Film Festival, just an appreciation for entertaining cinema.

SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE BICYCLE FILM FESTIVAL

FRIDAY

7 p.m.: The program kicks off with 'Standing Start,' a dramatically narrated, 12-minute short in which the world's fastest track cyclist is portrayed as an ancient gladiator. 'Road to Roubaix,' the festival's sole feature-length film, is a stunningly shot documentary about the world's most grueling one-day bike race, Paris-Roubaix. The film follows the 2007 edition of the race over 160 miles of notoriously treacherous cobblestones in northern France, capturing the historic countryside, ghastly crashes and shattered, dust-caked faces of the competitors after they finish.

9 p.m.: This program of Bicycle Film Festival classics includes 'POV' filmographer Lucas Brunelle's Greatest Hits. Brunelle's breathtaking footage follows fixed-gear-riding bike messengers from around the world as they dodge traffic in alley-cat races. The short film 'Tandemonium' is Austin's own festival submission. Accompanied by music from local band the Orange Mothers, the film features a tight-knit group of twentysomething Austinites touring the city aboard vintage cruiser bikes built for two.

SATURDAY

7 p.m.:Tonight's program includes the documentary 'Orange Bikes Take Manhattan,' chronicling an imprudent DKNY marketing campaign. When the fashion company uses orange cruisers locked up throughout the city as a promotional tool — mimicking the completely white Ghost Bikes, which serve as memorials to cyclists hit by cars — the New York cycling community reacts with vehemence. In 'Jim's Lines,' artist Jim Denevan creates art with nothing more than a bicycle, a rake, and a beach.

9 p.m.: In 'Bike Thief,'filmmaking brothers Cary and Van Neistat prove just how easy it is to steal a bike (in this case, their own bike with increasingly more obnoxious equipment). With festival favorite 'Waffle Bike,''a fully weaponized, mobile waffle-making machine,' the Neistat brothers strike again, this time in conjunction with prominent New York artist Tom Sachs. The seven-minute movie follows Waffle Bike on its maiden voyage from the island of Manhattan to the borough of Brooklyn, in search of the pair of chickens that will lay the eggs that are essential to the waffle batter.