Bike Movies to Stream - Free!
By
Sue Montgomery
Posted: 2020-05-19T23:22:00Z
When it’s too dark, rainy or windy to bike ... Stream a free biking movie!
Many public libraries offer online movie streaming to card holders via HOOPLA and/or Kanopy. If yours does, search in your HOOPLA and Kanopy apps for any of the titles listed below. Or search the apps for “Bike” or “Bicycle” to find more selections:
The Bicycle Thief - 1948 Kanopy
Hailed worldwide as one of the greatest movies ever made, the story takes place in poverty-stricken post-WWII Rome. A man is on his first day of a new job full of hope of salvation for his desperate family when he discovers his bicycle, needed for work, is stolen. He frantically searches for it in Rome with little luck. His moral dilemma to steal someone else's bike leaves the viewer thinking the story is more a parable than a tragedy.
Klunkerz - A Film About Mountain Biking - 2012 Kanopy
This documentary about the early years of mountain biking in the 1960s and 70s is named after the junkyard bikes that enthusiasts raced down the hills of northern California's Marin County. Scavenged from dumpsters and pre-WWII bike parts, "klunkers," "bombers," " beaters," and "ballooners" laid the groundwork for what is now the sport of mountain biking.
Freedom Riders - Pioneers of Mountain Biking - 2009 Kanopy
Features the adventures and misadventures of the folks who popularized off-road cycling. It took a lot of relentless effort to convince the U.S. Forest Service to allow mountain biking in key forests under their management. This film describes how mountain bikers worked with the Forest Service to eventually make Teton Pass the first permitted downhill-specific trail in the U.S.
One Day in April - Collegiate Cycling Competition - 2014 Kanopy
This documentary of the “Little 500,” modeled after the Indianapolis 500 auto race, is an example of pure sport and kinship told through the eyes of four bike racing teams on Indiana University’s campus. Founded in 1951, the annual bike race is a scholarship fundraiser run on a quarter-mile cinder track by four-person relay teams of men who race 50 miles (200 laps) and teams of women who race 25 miles (100 laps.)
So check out the movies and add a review of one or more in the comments to this blog.
I'd enjoy hearing your thoughts.