I rounded up a posse of bike friends to attend the Tampa screening of Dear Mr. Gore: A Somewhat Cinematic Correspondence Awkwardly Tracing a Circular Journey Constructed on a Warming Planet over the weekend. This documentary screening was part of the Gasparilla International Film Festival held at the Channelside Cinemas in downtown Tampa.
My film friends — Rick and Lisa, Ken and Amy and my “mini me”:
Director/star Lisa Mills, a film instructor at the University of Central Florida, shot this documentary as a open-ended response to the challenges presented by Al Gore in his “Inconvenient Truth”. Shot almost entirely with a video camera mounted to a makeshift boom on the front of Lisa’s bike, the hour-long documentary is filled with personal observations, brief interviews with bike friends all over the world and lots of sweet riding action.
We were expecting a more political stance…based on the title, my friend Ken and I both remarked that we were prepared for lots of Bush-bashing and the like. The director steered quickly away from this, though, and instead presented a good overview of U.S. vs. European cycling and touched on many aspects of central Florida’s veloculture. For us seasoned commuters, Lisa’s travels to Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark aren’t particularly eye-opening; we’ve been beaten over the head for years with the knowledge that the fabled bike city of Copenhagen is better in terms of bicycle accomodation than anywhere in the U.S. We get it already! Contrasting the two countries, though, provides a message to the non-cyclists in the viewing audience — we’ve got some serious catching up to do on our shores.
When Lisa returns to Florida, she explores Orlando and Tampa by bicycle as she tackles her commute to work. Her experiences are probably familiar to many of us…the difficult intersections, the unresponsive traffic lights, the ignorant (or worse) motorists, the fear of narrow, traffic-heavy streets. One of the disappointments of her Tampa footage was her choice of city guide. Lisa describes her guide as a “10 year commuting veteran” or somesuch, and her guide does most of his commuting on the sidewalks. Again, for the non-cyclists among the audience, this didn’t seem particularly bad, but my crew snickered and shook our heads. At the same time, though, it illustrated just how difficult our streets can be to share with motorists…when an experienced commuter chooses the sidewalk, things must be REALLY bad at street level!
Lisa Mills spent a good bit of time exploring the alleycat and fixed-gear culture of our part of Florida. I saw a few familiar faces in the crowds (the St. Pete crew was well-represented), and Lisa remarked how this youthful, passionate group of bike riders really encouraged her throughout her biking travels.
Perhaps what I liked best about the documentary is this: when Lisa attached the boom to the front of her bike and started the camera, it was often pointing at her face. That footage captured her enthusiasm, her apprehensions and her utter joy of being on two wheels. Those of us who have spent some time away from the bike or who have rediscovered our childhood love of cycling as adults can totally relate — nothing puts a youthful smile on a person’s face faster than riding a bicycle. For that footage alone, the film is worth tracking down. Overall, it was a good look at our commuting culture…a bit disjointed at times but it all came together in the end.
Several of our readers had expressed interest in a digital version of the documentary, and Lisa responded by saying, “Right now I cannot put the film online because that will torpedo any chances of other film festivals programming it. I have to get it into as many festivals as possible because that’s the way I “publishâ€? as an asst. professor at UCF.” The film DOES exist in a digital form, so let’s hope that once the festival cycle dies down, the rest of you will be able to see this documentary.
To keep track of Lisa Mills and her other film projects, please visit her blog.
And, I’ll leave you with this image — the bike racks around Channelside were overflowing with bikey goodness. There were bikes locked to trees, poles and pretty much everywhere else that day, too. It would have been a shame to drive to see this documentary, right?
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