Adding another element to the Bicycle Film Festival

By Francis Mora

Sitting in Bicycle Film Festival central eating some real New York pizza and drinking Brendt Barbur’s vitamin water in this homey Chelsea office, I look around for the distinguishing detritus of a cyclist-helmets, lights, shoes, a bike, whatever.
There it is, off in the corner: an older, functioning Italian fixed gear.

Barbur, the subject of my interview, is wearing a vintage BMX jersey. He looks a little more Breaking Away than, say, Endless Summer. His nearby coworker is sporting tightly rolled jeans. Barbur and his colleague are from a different cycling subset than this magazine covers, and I start to wonder if my assignment stands a chance: Kickstand editors wanted me to find out what it’s going to take to bring a cruiser flavor to the 9-year-old Bicycle Film Festival.

Barbur is the man behind the Festival, the executive director who has turned his small NYC event into an international phenomenon that now travels to more than 30 cities worldwide.

Right now the ratio of cruiser bike films to films about other bicycles is about zero to 70.

It turns out this has little to do with Barbur’s cycling preference. He doesn’t think of the festival as anything but inclusive. Not to mention, he can relate to cruisers, having grown up in cruiser bicycle mecca: Santa Monica, California. Pretty girls, beaches and some of the best custom cruisers in the States. He lived it.

So cruisers have a place in his heart, even if the films in his festival are decidedly fixed-gear related. Frankly, he’s just too busy to seek out cruiser bicycle filmmakers, he says. He’s more than willing to review those flicks, if they ever get submitted (maybe Tim Burton could send over a reel).

“It’s really a matter of talking to those people who are interested in that genre; there’s just not that many people who ask for or about it,” Barbur says.

Patrick Trefz-one of Barbur’s close friends and an artist from California-even made a cruiser movie called “A Bicycle Trip,” about a surfer and his bicycle. So there’s hope.

But the truth is that Barbur just wants the film festival to build a better bicycle community. He wants it open to everybody inside and outside of the bicycle culture, including cruisers, low-riders, beach, vintage or custom.

With that philosophy in mind, he has turned his small New York-centric festival into something that “costs way too much money” to produce and has exploded in popularity virtually overnight, with the addition of cities such as London, Sydney, Denver and Miami into the mix. It now takes more than 3,000 volunteers to pull off. “The growth,” Barbur says, is attributed to “enthusiasm for the bike culture.”

And to think it all started after he was hit by a bus while riding his bike. The anger from the accident spurred an idea to become a bicycle advocate; since he was an actor involved in film and art, the festival became his canvas.

The Bicycle Film Festival’s premise is simple, feature films starring bicycles of all kinds. There are plenty of fixed gear films, BMX movies, and road, mountain and free-riding shorts to feature.

Cruiser bicycle films, not so much. That is until more people come out of the woodwork to produce epic cruiser flicks. So consider this a call to build cruiser momentum for future Bicycle Film Festivals, and know that Barbur encourages it.
“Just seems like a general lack of interest in the community,” he says. “Not saying (cruisers) are not interesting, but rather it’s a more subdued nature of the cycling. The beach cruiser/cruiser genre is not intense; it carries with it an essence of tranquility and laid back enjoyment.”

So I’ll settle for the next best thing: calling on all of you to roll up to the nearest film festival stop like it’s your weekly Wednesday night ride, costumes optional, and represent the cruiser culture. Barbur won’t mind if you show up to any of the festival stops in record numbers, either.

“I would be impressed, and welcome it,” he says. “The main thing is that the BFF is creating unity amongst the bike culture at large and that any bike will be welcome. If hundreds of bikes of any type were to show up to the BFF, the mission is accomplished.”

Want proof that other people like cruiser bike flicks? Check out these films:

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure
Sure Paul Reubens is a little creepy, but you have to respect a man willing
to travel the country in search of his stolen red cruiser bicycle.

Bicycle Trip
Patrick Trefz’s short film about surfer dude Peter Garaway’s
dream-quest through Santa Cruz, Calif., on his beach cruiser with his single-fin board under one arm. Plus, filmmaker Patrick Trefz knows Brendt Barbur.

The Bicycle Thief
What is it with classic movies revolving around cruiser bicycles being stolen? This 40s classic, adapted from Italian cinema, is decidedly more serious than the other bicycle caper film mentioned above.

Skills Like This
Max Solomon faces the awful truth that he will never be a writer. So, in an attempt to find his true calling, he turns to crime. In this inventive comedy, three friends have their lives turned upside down when one of them realizes that larceny might be his best skill. Plus, it stars a sweet cruiser named Gloria, we love her.