The Bike Travel Film Festival was held at the Somerville Theatre on Tuesday, March 18.
— Photos by Jeffrey Shwom

By Jeffrey Shwom

Bike and travel enthusiasts attended the 15th Annual Ciclismo Classico Bike Travel Film Festival at the Somerville Theatre, on Tuesday, March 18. Guests watched eight short films, including scenes of grasslands of the Central Plains, a foursome’s ride through The Balkans, adventure biking in Socotra off the coast of Yemen, and a mountain biking community in the Navajo Nation in Arizona. The audience then voted for their favorite film on paper voting cards. When asked if they biked that night, about one-third of the crowd gleefully raised their hands.

In her introduction, Lauren Hefferon, owner of Ciclismo Classico, said the festival represents “a variety of travel, of people, of experiences.” Biking, in general, is “the way to see and explore where you live, no matter where” you ride. Camera usage varied in each film from professional to more amateur, with Cycling across America at 10.2 mph director Kate Osborne using her cell phone to document most of her 3,659-mile journey from San Francisco to the coast of North Carolina.

The audience chuckled at the shortest film, a 3-minute self-deprecating comedy by Brennan M Guerriere, who “lives out his Vermont weekend warrior dream of biking to his local ski hill” 40 miles away in the hopes of channeling the energy of Göran Kropp, a Swede known for his 8,000-mile journey by bike from Sweden to Nepal that included climbing Mount Everest.

Libertad, one of the more moving films, follows Christa Castillo, a Guatemalan woman who “turns to the mountain bike to help women find healing and freedom” as part of the World Ride’s Guatemala program.

Hosts Lauren Hefferon (left) and Joy Spadafora ask the audience to raise their hands if the biked that night.

The film festival returned to the Somerville Theatre for the second time in three years, and from the sounds of it, wants to return to the theater next year. Joy Spadafora, Film Festival Coordinator and the other host for the evening, told us “We used to have it at the Regent Theatre. My predecessors had a relationship with the Somerville Theatre. We got a positive vibe from them and the staff. We like that it is T accessible, for folks living in Cambridge and Boston.”

The raffle portion, after intermission, was entertaining as well, with some moviegoers claiming, in good fun, a biased bucket that focused too strongly on tickets starting with the number five. Shortly after some initial groans, there were many cheers by those with tickets that started with the number seven, as hosts handed out cycling shirts, tune-ups at area bike shops, and gift certificates for a Ciclismo Classico tour. The proceeds of the raffle went to The Pan-Mass Challenge ride, which benefits Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Hefferon, who started her bike tour company 37 years ago, told us in the lobby pre-show that coming together as a community and shared interest is “always good…we can never beat it right?” To her, “bicycling is really high, it’s really booming and it’s really neat to see all the people coming who are aspirational cyclists.” 

As guests filled out of the lobby onto Holland Street, a few donned helmets and flashing lights, and rode off into the night, some onto the bike path, and some with dreams of faraway adventures and perhaps their own documentary films.