Bicycle Dreams Screening To Benefit MassBike

From MassBike

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Bicycle Dreams, the award-winning feature-length documentary about the Race Across America (RAAM), will premiere in Boston at the Regent Theatre in Arlington on Tuesday, March 6 at 7 p.m. as part of the film’s ongoing nationwide winter tour. The screening is presented as a benefit for MassBike and is co-sponsored by Team 4HIVHope, a local team that will be competing in RAAM later this year.

The film, which has been selling out theaters from coast to coast on its current tour, has won numerous awards at film festivals all over the world, “is an up-close look at what RAAM riders go through,” says Stephen Auerbach, the director and producer of Bicycle Dreams. “They deal with searing desert heat, agonizing mountain climbs, and endless stretches of open road. And they do it all while battling extreme exhaustion and sleep deprivation. It’s a great subject for a film.”

“Bicycle Dreams is a spectacular and heartfelt film that offers a riveting portrait of extreme courage in the face of inhuman obstacles,” writes TheLoveOfMovies.com. “It is an artistic triumph that renewed my belief in the power of desire and the strength of the human will.”

“We are very excited to be able to bring Bicycle Dreams to so many locations along the route that have never had access to the film before,” says Auerbach. “Viewers will be overwhelmed by the amount of pain and suffering these riders go through.”

To capture the mammoth scope of the race, Auerbach worked around the clock with a complement of 18 cameras. Embedded camera operators traveled inside the racers’ support crew vehicles, gaining unprecedented access to the cyclists and their teams. Their footage captured emotional and physical breakdowns, late-night strategy sessions, and great moments of personal triumph, all in intimate detail. Auerbach then took on the enormous task of editing hundreds of hours of material and forming it into a powerful and inspiring look inside the most difficult race on the planet.

Bicycle Dreams has won major awards at the Fallbrook and Breckenridge film festivals, as well as the Yosemite, Grand Rapids, Red Rock and All Sports LA film festivals, among many others.

Most recently the film added the Best Foreign Film trophy from the Krasnogorski International Festival of Sports Films in Moscow and was also invited to be included in the 2011 World Cinema Showcase in New Zealand as well as the Mountain Film Festival in Istanbul, Turkey. And before that it made its Australian debut at the Big Pond Film Festival in Adelaide.

Critical acclaim for the film continues to pour in from all sources.

“An astonishing documentary,” declares Pez Cycling. “This film is a ride of many stark contrasts; when it ended I felt both shattered and triumphant. I realized I was experiencing its genius. A central theme of Bicycle Dreams is the profoundly inspiring strength of the human in facing monumental challenge and tragedy. Bicycle Dreams is a race of truth.”

“This film isn’t for those who want to shy away from the tragic side of the human experience, unwilling to risk the cracking of their shell of denial, not willing to risk their coping mechanism,” writes Cycling-Review.com. “Bicycle Dreams captures the human condition like few other films. Bicycle Dreams moves us to break through the barrier of the fear of death. I have seldom found a film that captures this ‘life drama’ as powerfully as does Bicycle Dreams.”

Bicycle Dreams also has been named one of the top 10 adventure films of all time by both The Matador Network and Playground Magazine, calling it the best bicycle film since “Breaking Away.”

Tickets will be $12 in advance and $15 at the door the night of the show. To purchase advance tickets, order online at www.regenttheatre.com. The Regent Theatre is located at 7 Medford St. in Arlington.

The guest speaker at the event will be one of the racers in the film, Patrick Autissier of Boston, who is a member of Team 4HIVHope, which will be competing as a team in RAAM 2012. Three of the four members who completed RAAM 2011 in just over six days are living with HIV and two of them will return for this year’s race. Autissier, who is an HIV scientist and researcher, will be conducting tests during the race in hopes of discovering the effects of endurance athletics on both HIV-positive and negative individuals and comparing the results. For more information, go to www.team4HIVHope.com.

For more information on the film, go to www.bicycledreamsmovie.com

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Amazing NPR Story About RAAM

Here is NPR’s Radio Lab amazing story about bike racers in RAAM. Absolutely fascinating, these guys are at once my heroes and bat shit insane.

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