Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church EarthCare Team is offering a free screening of the documentary “Bikes vs. Cars” on Sunday, April 29th @ 4pm in their fellowship hall, 2400 NW 85th St, with plenty of parking available on 25th Ave NW. Please enter the hall across the street from the parking lot.
About the film: When a child first rides a bike, freedom is the sensation that comes flooding in. I can glide atop the pavement! I can take myself places! When Aline Cavalcante and Dan Koeppel hop atop their bikes in São Paulo and L.A., they too feel that sensation. Yet somehow in their quest to take themselves where they’re going with their own power, they are making a political statement, climbing atop their activist chariots and riding bravely into the mainstream crawl of the automotive norm. Why? They live in cities where car is king.
Swedish director Fredrik Gertten lives in Malmö, Sweden and he hops on his bike every day to pedal himself to and fro. Much as in the world’s cycling capitals Copenhagen and Amsterdam, riding a bike is not a political statement or environmental stand. It’s just a practical way of going about one’s daily business, a relatively safe and reliable means of transportation.
BIKES VS CARS takes a humanistic approach to the environmental issue of transportation. Although fewer cars on the road certainly leads to greener societies, the film presents a picture of the devastating and often fatal chaos that prevails in cities around the world where the automotive industry has been allowed a free hand to draw up their car-dominating urban schemes. Uncovering some of the motivating factors – both political and financial – Gertten presents a people-centric look at how we choose to get ourselves around.
Whether you plan on pedaling, walking, or driving your way to your next destination, BIKES VS CARS is crucial viewing, a message from a movement already underway, a call to contemplate where our city-planning priorities reside in the transportation department. If, as São Paulo urban planner Raquel Rolnik states, “the concern is about the flow of cars. It’s not about people,” what kind of a world are we creating for ourselves?
We invite you to arrive a bit early to enjoy light refreshments, and to stay after the film to participate in a small-group discussion.