Bicycles Mobilized as Art in Annual International Festival

Cars and pedestrians may still dominate the hectic streets of Harvard Square, but it’s the bicycle that will have the right of way at the Boston Bicycle Film Festival (BFF). The festival, which will run from September 23-25 in Cambridge and the Boston area. The festival will showcase dozens of short films and include an exhibition of hand-built bicycles.

This local event, now in its third year, is part of an international network of festivals founded by Brendt Barbur. According to festival lore, Barbur came up with the idea after being hit by a bus while riding his bicycle in New York City.

What began as a one night event at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City has now entered its tenth year and expanded to 39 cities around the world.

With a burgeoning popularity amongst cyclists and non-riders alike, the celebration will now span three days with various exhibitions, film screenings, and afterparties.

While the line-up of films to be screened is similar across cities, each festival also takes on a unique local flavor.

“The supplementary cultural events are site-specific and reflective of the local community,” says the festival’s co-producer Jamie Renee Smith ’08-’10.

For example, kicking off the festival will be a gallery opening and reception at the Boston Area Handbuilt Bicycle Exhibition, which will feature an exhibition custom-made bicycle frames by 11 local craftsmen alongside other forms of visual art and live music.

With Boston’s long history of custom handmade bicycles dating back to the turn of the twentieth century, Joshua H. Kampa, who is returning for his second year as producer, explains that the exhibition celebrates the revival of the bicycle as both a tool and an art form.

“Handbuilt bicycles are really just functional sculpture,” Kampa says.

The films, which will be screened in Harvard Square’s Brattle Theatre, are diverse in origin and subject matter. They range from a Spike Jonze-produced documentary on BMX legend Mat Hoffman to a Japanese art film featuring bike parts in a Rube Goldberg machine. Local artists are also represented in the BFF with, among others, the work of Massachusetts-based director Lucas Brunelle.

In “Line of Sight,” a documentary that will be screened at this year’s festival, Brunelle has collaborated with director Benny Zenga to make a film about Brunelle himself. Dozens of other short films and documentaries round out the line-up, and many of them are exclusive to this year’s BFF.

Kampa remarks that the variety of films that will be represented in the event reflects the diversity of cyclists who reside in the city.

“The Boston bike community is substantial but fragmented,” he says. “The festival is a common meeting point for all the different subcultures: road and cycling racers, mountain bikers, hipsters and their fixed gear bikes, BMX riders, commuters.”

Both Kampa and Smith note that Boston’s relatively small size already promotes interaction between cyclists because they tend to see the same people over and over again.

“When I’m biking and I see another cyclist, I’ll wave,” Kampa says, “which people don’t do when driving cars.”

In a city such as Boston where the subway stops running at midnight and parking is difficult to find, bikes are often the environmentally-friendly and practical choice as well.

Indeed, the producers hope that the festival will even reach out to those who do not already own a bike.

They point to the festival in Milan, which draws national funding and thousands of participants annually. As the second largest cultural festival of any kind in the city, its success reflects the surging popularity of bicycles.

“It really speaks to the cultural reach this festival can have beyond cycling groups,” Smith says.