Bicycle Film Festival: making culture

In its first Hong Kong edition, the multifaceted festival founded by Brendt Barbur brings the infinite possibilities, fantasies and boundless forms of the bicycle — expressed in film, music, and images — to the Chinese megalopolis.

In Hong Kong, bicycles are making culture. Pedal power is shaping identity and community, affecting the ideas and designs of the cities to come and influencing the dynamics of urban areas from a social and artistic point of view. With this in mind, the Bicycle Film Festival (BFF) — which was first held in New York in 2001, and quickly became a proven success with 300,000 participants in over 30 cities — held its first edition in China last 11 through 25 January.

"The BFF simply aims to celebrate the bicycle through music, art and cinema" explained New York director and founder Brendt Barbur, who took part in and led the Fun Ride, a 12 km race across the ex-British colony starting right at the Cinematographic Archive. After having been hit by a bus in 2001, Brendt transformed the shock and negative experience into a Film Festival that became an unexpected success. "If we can inspire people to travel on two wheels and perhaps make a film about it, we'll be happy. What are we expecting in Hong Kong? A high level of participation, especially from a creative point of view, given that the city has a lively film culture". Organised by the Hong Kong Arts Centre, Flwrider, and Sport B. of the brand Agnès B., whose cinema at Wan Chai is hosting the screenings, the festival brings together film and bike enthusiasts from Asian cities mainly in the northern part of the New Territories — those who don't just go for a Sunday ride, but who travel, move and experience two-wheel freedom.

"We are hoping to take the BFF to other Chinese cities and convey greater safety and trust in this means of transport" says Brian Fu, the organiser of the Hong Kong BFF. "Service stations and automatic distributors for inner tubes and tyres are emerging in cities in Europe and Taiwan and so will also end up here. Cinema and art can raise awareness among the public".

Top: taking off for the Fun Ride, a a 12 km race across Hong Kong; Bicycle Film Festival founder Brendt Barbur, stands in the centre. Above: some aspects of the Bicycle Film Festival in Hong Kong

In all, there are six programs with 50 films and documentaries on the infinite possibilities, fantasies and boundless forms of the bicycle. The first program, Hong Kong loves New York, brings together short films on pedal power in the Big Apple, from the adventures of one of its most famous skaters by Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze, to the stories of Queens kids on their stereo bikes. Another program, Bicycle Talent Show, presents a number of highly talented individuals: inventors of two-wheel campers, biker-artists who use the bicycle like a paint-brush and the beach like a canvas, skateboarders looking to take over New Zealand.

Bicycle Film Festival founder Brendt Barbur, during the Fun Ride

But the global, eclectic event, now into its 12th consecutive year, doesn't only include cinema: concerts, afterparties and competitions for filmmakers join a display of thirty-five rare vintage bicycles from private collections and a photographic exhibition. The vintage bicycle collection, on display at the small Gallery XXX, includes the lightest street bicycle in the world, weighing as little as a laptop: 3,15 kg of mostly carbon fibre designed by German cyclist Günter Mai, who has travelled around 20,000 kilometres around the world on it.

The BFF brings together that multifarious creative community that shares a single passion and the same ideas about the urban future

The BFF brings together that multifarious creative community that shares a single passion and the same ideas about the urban future, thus imagined by its founder: "city landscapes will include more public spaces, that will replace the wide roads and main streets dedicated to vehicles in city centres. Then there will be areas of native vegetation that will contribute to improving air quality, while commercial and residential buildings will be designed with large parking areas for bicycles. Offices will have showers and lockers so that cyclists can get changed, as do some cities such as London. Copenhagen and Amsterdam are excellent examples of small cities that have adopted the bicycle as the chief means of transport: mega-cities like Shanghai, New York and Tokyo can learn a lot from them." Francesca Esposito

Some of the Bicycle Film Festival's participants

A photographic exhibition held during the Bicycle Film Festival

During the festival, thirty-five rare vintage bicycles from private collections were on display

Bicycle Film Festival: making culture

In its first Hong Kong edition, the multifaceted festival founded by Brendt Barbur brings the infinite possibilities, fantasies and boundless forms of the bicycle — expressed in film, music, and images — to the Chinese megalopolis.

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