The Bicycle Film Festival has to be one of the quirkiest genre-festivals in the country, and yet, in a place like the Twin Cities where bicycles are ubiquitous and beloved (the flat terrain helps, natch) it kind of makes sense. Whether it makes money, I’m not sure, but whatever Take-Up Productions seems to do lately turns mostly to gold. These guys have good instincts for what Twin Citians are curious to see and frankly no one has done more to get the local cinemaphile scene up and on the screen again mostly by not taking themselves too seriously.
The Bicycle Film Festival, which broadly includes films from around the world, well, related to bikes–racing bikes, trick bikes, art bikes, you name it–just as the Tour de France gets underway. It began on July 8 and continues through July 11. It began with a screening of the cultish classic The Triplets of Belleville at the Riverview Theater and continues tonight and tomorrow at the Cedar Cultural Center. Most of the works are very short, frankly, so the thing to do is show up with your bike posse and take in an afternoon or evening’s worth. And yes, you’d best bike there.
Meanwhile, Take-Up Productions is readying its own micro-cinema, called the Trylon, in South Minneapolis for a July 17 opening series of Buster Keaton silent comedies. Check out Take-Up’s site for details. With accompaniment by an accordion and musical saw, this is going to be a blast and, as of press time, there were only 17 tickets left.
