Kalamazoo Bicycle Film Festival

    This made for a very interesting Saturday night.  The Kalamazoo Bicycle Film Fest is a two hour presentation of short films involving cycling. I really didn't know what to expect, I had only noticed the sign the day before on the marquee of the Little Theater at WMU. With some trepidation I went, expecting to be the only wack job to show up.  I was wrong there were a lot of other wack jobs there also, many of whom also rode their bikes.
      At $8 per person it was right in line with the local cinema.  The presentation consisted of 12 bicycle "shorts"  ranging from documentaries to whimsical visual recordings. There were two longish documentaries, one about developing mountain bike trails in "Bring Riding to the People" and another about the way bicycling is rescuing people in several cultures, "With my own two wheels."  Both were obviously well financed and produced documentaries providing some valuable and poignant perspectives about the integration of cycling into modern life.
      The the small sized "bicycle shorts" were by far the most entertaining.  I particularly liked "Training Wheels," a story of a 21 year old man learning to ride a bike for the first time; and "A Bicycle Trip," a brilliantly animated account of Albert Hofman's first experiment with LSD in 1943.  But what  had me rolling on the floor with gut wrenching laughter was "36 Bicycles," an hilarious monologue by a man who had had 36 bicycles stolen from him since moving to New York.  There's nothing funny about a stolen bike, but there is something incredibly funny about a man talking about his cycling obsession despite losing 36.  For instance, he developed a plan after his wife suggested that taking a cab was cheaper.  He decided that when it happened again he would simply rush to the store and buy exactly the same bike so she would never have to know.  Something about a common brand of insanity attracted me to this film.
    I was an evening well spent, I didn't try to find any links to offer , I'm sure they are available out in cyberspace somewhere.  I highly recommend you find and enjoy them however you come by them on this interweb thing.

Films                                               Maker
A Day in the Life of a Bicycle           Jeroen Klokgie
Training Wheels                               Sarah Fleming
2011 RAAM                                   Anrew Otto
Bring the Riding to the People           Julie Morey
The Line                                           Jose' Pedro Lopes
36 Bicycles                                       Ian Frase
Kodiak Alaska Snowbiking               Phillip Tschersich
The Cycle                                          Roy Clovis
Family Fun Bike Build                        James Wilson
A Bicycle Trip                                    Lorenzo Veracini, Nandini Nambia,
                                                          Marco Avoletta
The Cyclotrope Experiment                Tim Wheatley
With my own two wheels                    Jacob Seigel-Boettner