Lowell Outdoor Bike-In film screening of “Riding Bikes with the Dutch,” TONIGHT (June 22)!

Dear Film Friends:

This event post was originally published on May 26 — we’re bringing it back and keeping it on our home page through JUNE 22, the day of the event. We hope to you at Shedd Park Pavilion TONIGHT – the event will take place RAIN or SHINE!

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RIDING BIKES WITH THE DUTCH
Wednesday, June 22
8PM: UMass Lowell Climate Change Film Shorts
8:30PM: Riding Bikes With the Dutch feature film
Shedd Park Pavilion at Shedd Park
433 Rogers Street (Route 38), Lowell
Free admission  |  BYO lawn chair or blanket

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As avid bikers ourselves, the LFC is pretty excited about hosting our first outdoor bike-in film screening! We’re hoping for great weather so that we can all bike over to Shedd Park and enjoy this visually stunning and inspiring documentary film, Riding Bikes with the Dutch. We’re presenting this event as part of Lowell Sustainability Week in partnership with the Lowell Green Building Commission. Some of you may recall that we hosted an outdoor screening at Shedd Park in 2010 with the GBC for The Nature of Cities — it’s a great venue as we are protected from the elements (should it rain) and are in a darkened area for better film viewing as the sun goes down. We’ll kick off the evening with a screening of some Climate Change Film Shorts created by UMass Lowell students in association with UML’s Climate Change Initiative. Inspiring!

About our main feature, taken from DutchinAmerica.com: American filmmaker Michael Bauch fell in love with the Dutch bicycling lifestyle. His film, Riding Bikes with the Dutch, was created while he lived in Amsterdam for a while and premiered in May 2010 at the Bicycle Film Festival in Long Beach, California. The film compares the bicycling culture of Holland with the car-centered lifestyle in Southern California and provides a twist of optimism in the urban seaside location of Long Beach, California. Amsterdam streetscapes & bicycle parking structures and Los Angeles freeways & Long Beach bike paths serve as scenic backdrop for the filmmaker’s dream to create more livable communities here in the United States. In Bauch’s own words: “The first time I stepped off the train in Amsterdam I was literally speechless. As soon as I set foot on the ground I was almost run over by a mob of bikes. I turned to look up and to my amazement there was a 3 level structure dedicated to just parking bicycles. Everyone from three years old to 93 seemed to be tooling around the city on two wheels. This was too much to take in with just my own eyes. I needed to share this with everyone I could and this is why I made my film Riding Bikes with the Dutch.”

As a bike-in screening during Sustainability Week, we encourage anyone who can get to Shedd Park by bike to do so! Get your bike-friendly posse together and ride to the Park en masse — we suggest setting a meeting place beforehand and biking over to the event together in a show of bicycle unity. There’ll be plenty of space for all of us to store our bikes safely during the film. Whether you’re biking or driving, be sure to bring a blanket or chair to sit on — we’ll be watching the film under the pavilion on a concrete surface.

We’ll see you all TONIGHT for a fabulous night of film under the stars. The event will be held rain or shine so feel free to come by car in case of showers. In the meantime, we hope you’ll check out all the GREAT bicycle-friendly events taking place throughout downtown Lowell from June 20-25 during Sustainability Week!