Pimp my panniers … Made in Queens, one of the films shown at the Bicycle film festival
Nigel is stacking BMX bikes on the pavement opposite the Barbican. There are 300 in all, so he’s arranging them alternately upside-down and right-way-up to maximise space in the venue’s before that time stuffed bike racks. Inside the cinema, cyclists watch Made in Queens and The Scraper Bike King, two of 23 new films being shown at the London leg of this year’s Bicycle film feast, a mobile, international event that aims to promote the best in cycle cinema.
Both Made in Queens and The Scraper Bike King are about kids that have renovated their revolutions. The Queens teenagers of Joe Stevens and Nicholas Randall’s documentary – all immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago – transform old bikes into mobile soundsystems through loading them by sub-woofers, laptops and lighting rigs, then christening them “Tinnitus Rex” and “Basszilla”. Their modifications are farther more ambitious than those of the riders in Rafael Flores’s The Scraper Bike King but the two groups share that powerful unity when coterie riding.
Outside the venue, London’s own burgeoning bike gang – the fixed-gear riders – are flooding Nigel’s parking stalls. They sport vintage Italian racing caps and punky-cute tattoos, and even add to the number a few genuine bike messengers in their number. They’re here for the Urban Bike Shorts – a mixed bag of velo-centric short films, ranging from X-Games-style tricks videos to more interesting fare, such as Brendan McNamee’session Polo Manual (2009) – a fun-and-throwaway manage to playing bike polo.
The more prudent stuff had come earlier in the day. Irish director Peter Madden’s The Tall Old Lady (2009) was a touching story of one man’s changing connection with his bike over their years in company, Brian Schoenfelder’s The Third Wheel (2009) carefully documented the struggles of pedicab riders for example they battled for space with taxicab drivers in New York’s arena district, and Maz Lewis’s Good Friday (2008) did a fine – admitting that somewhat grinding – job of going behind the scenes at Herne Hill velodrome, where Britain’s Bradley Wiggins started his career.
Graham, a 30-something amateur road racer clad in black Lycra, raced in just as Dutch director Erik van Empel’s Tour of Legends (2003) started. The cleats of his cycling shoes clacked against the cinema’s put a floor on for example on shelter a rabble of mourners paid subsidy to Italian cycling legend Gino Bartali. Bartali – winner of the 1948 Tour de France – cycled in grand company and Van Empel chases down legends such as Marcel Dupont and Briek Schotte to reminisce over the pre-TV tour.
Tour of Legends is a gloriously romantic paean to cycling’s lost stainlessness. It’s evocative, reverent and (thanks to some unnaturally handsome September sunshine) seen only by Graham and perhaps 10 others. Pit this festival’s two draws against each other, and cycling will out – as event producer Laura Fletcher herself admits: “As soon as it’s graceful weather and it’s Bicycle film festival, most people just scantling their tickets and go ride the bike.” Bartali would have been proud. Van Empel will have to conduct one’s self by it.
• The Bicycle film festival is in Copenhagen on 30 September, Milan from 8-11 October and Paris from 14-18 October. See bicyclefilmfestival.com for details.
