Pedalphiles
by Brian Standing
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Amanda Browder, Angela McJunkin, Jeremy Chell, Sam Butzer, Tyson KlipsteinDirector: Brian Standing
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: NTSC
Running Time: 38 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-12
Studio: Prolefeed Studios
Movie Reviews of Pedalphiles
Movie Review: For anyone interested in making a film or seeing how it's done.
Summary: 5 Stars
As a film-teaching traditionalist, I've had to accept the present generation's indifference to "The General," "Potemkin," "Grand Illusion," and "Breathless." Consequently, as a trade-off, or meeting ground, I've been admitting more "video" talk and product into the classroom, even encouraging students to discover on their own the innovations of D. W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein almost a century ago.
This "little" treasure is, I've discovered, an effective film for motivating and enabling students to make the most out of limited resources. It's not necessary to have even the $15,000 shoestring budget of an early George Romero or John Waters film, or to contrive scripts with naked, cannibalistic zombies or transvestites with a scatological attraction to small dogs. "Pedalphiles" simply takes five members of the X generation and individualizes them while disclosing an enviable communal spirit among them. And it focuses on young people who resist either academic or careerist categorization, yet who are socially conscious, reflective and articulate as well as mechanically skilled. As a result, the film's "message" is exemplified by its subjects as well as disclosed by the filmmaker's techniques for telling his story. In fact, students in my classes are so drawn to the characters playing themselves on the screen that, barring a second screening, they miss the striking resourcefulness of the production--its organization into connected scenes, its minimal but effective use of titles, its employment of a marginal plot device as a ploy to direct attention to characters' concerns, its carefully edited scenes (I wouldn't be surprised if the ratio of unused to final footage was less that 1.5 to 1). In short, the film is exemplary in its resourcefulness, economy, and efficiency--and give the director credit for noticing a worthwhile subject that would most likely elude most of us and many filmmakers as well.
My problem now is receiving more student-made films, thanks to the influence of this one, than I have time to watch. So "Citizen Kane" and "The Seventh Seal" stay in the syllabus, if only in self-defense.
Summary of Pedalphiles
This 38-minute documentary follows the adventures of S.C.A.B. (Skids Creating Apocalyptic Bicycles), a roving gang of bicyclist- artist- philosophers hell-bent on ridding the world of automobiles. Using trash nabbed from the Madison streets, S.C.A.B. recycles junked ten-speeds and kids' scooters into nightmarish vehicles of urban terrorism. Between infiltrating events sponsored by tamer bicycle enthusiasts and wedging ill-fitting Huffies together with hacksaws and butterknives, S.C.A.B. members find time to muse on anarchy, consumer culture, proper bunny-hopping technique, the failure of the media and the purpose of art. "It's an experiment in phenomenology," says S.C.A.B. co-founder Michael Spelman, "but it's also nice to piss off cars."