2:00pm | With a budget that director Stephen Auerbach claims was less like a shoe-string budget but “something more akin to a dental floss budget,” the bicyclist documentary Bicycle Dreams is making its final stop appropriately in bike-friendly Long Beach after visiting 59 other cities across the nation. It premieres tonight at the Art Theatre at 7:00pm.
Part The Right Stuff substituting space-capsule-for-bicycle, part Americana painting, this odd little documentary has broken strange ground in the all-too-typical world of filmmaking since completing filming some three years ago. Documentaries, of course, lack a script and instead aim for the drama of real life. In this vein, Dreams began to eerily take on a mirror-like representation of its subject: just as bicyclist Jure Robic rode non-stop from Oceanside to the Rockies — a 56-hour endeavor — the filmmakers found themselves unable to sleep and unable to stop.
Photo courtesy of Stephen Auerbach.
The result was some 37,000 minutes of footage via 18 cameras whittled down to 106 minutes to capture not only the heroic ambitions of an individual pushing one’s self physically and emotionally, but also capturing the iconic status of the continental United States. Shot over ten days, the film — unlike many documentaries — lacks any form of a narrator, instead opting for true cinéma vérité where the images speak for themselves. In essence, it’s a documentary in all correct senses of the term where, instead of propagandizing the viewer, it tries to eliminate the space between viewer and screen as much as possible, letting the viewer ultimately decide his or her experience.
Garnering 16 film festival awards, the film’s unique acceptance has not been through major coastal cities but in the heartland of the United States: Grand Rapids, Fallbrooks, and Minneapolis to name a few.
Tickets for tonight’s single showing are $15 at the door. The Art Theater is located at
2025 E. 4th St. in Long Beach. For more information on the film, click here.