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9Th Annual Bike Shorts Film Festival Now Accepting Submissions

The Southwest Virginia-based festival focuses on storytelling using bicycles, with a special emphasis on local and student filmmakers

Submissions are now being accepted for RIDE Solutions’ 9th annual Bike Shorts Film Festival.  The Bike Shorts Film Festival screens short films produced by local, national and international filmmakers that focuses on using bicycles to tell stories.

“What makes this festival different,” says RIDE Solutions Director Jeremy Holmes, “is that we are not focused on cycling as a sport, but the bicycle as a pivot upon which interesting, surprising, and exciting stories are based.”

As examples, Holmes cited previous years’ submissions involving a zombie learning to ride a bicycle, a kid caught in a Groundhog’s Day-style time loop, and a music video about romance on a tandem bike. Other examples of past submissions are available at the Bike Shorts Film Festival YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/bikeshortsroanoke.

This year, the traditional May screening date has been moved to September to provide more opportunities for students at the high school and college level to participate.  Festival organizers emphasize that amateur and first-time filmmakers are encouraged to submit their work.

“One of the things that is most exciting about the Bike Shorts Film Festival is the opportunity to see creative work done by our friends and neighbors share the screen with highly-produced work from across the globe,” says Holmes.  “It’s an eclectic mix that proves the quality of the work we do here can be on par with anything produced anywhere in the world.”

The Festival will premiere with a screening at Roanoke’s historic Grandin Theatre on Friday, September 27th, with additional regional screenings to follow.  Complete submission guidelines and online form can be found at ridesolutions.org/bikeshorts

The Bike Shorts Film Festival offers prizes in six categories:

  • Juried Prize, $300:  Best overall film, selected by a panel of judges drawn from the regional arts and film community.
  • Best Local Film, $300:  Best film submitted by a team from within the RIDE Solutions service area, selected by a panel of judges drawn from the regional arts and film community.
  • Best Original Music, $300:  Must feature an original song or piece of music, featured either as a stand-alone music video or as an original score.  This category will also be selected by our panel of judges.
  • Best Teen Film, $100:  The best film by a filmmaker or film-making team between the ages of 13 and 18, as chosen by our panel of judges.
  • People’s Choice, $100:  The audience favorite, selected at the end of each Bike Shorts Film Festival screening. (4 total)

RIDE Solutions is a sustainable transportation program operated by the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission in partnership with the New River Valley Regional Commission, the Central Virginia Planning District Commission, and the West Piedmont Planning District Commission. It provides multimodal trip planning services – including carpool matching, bicycle commute routing, transit assistance, and telework consultation – for citizens and employers in central and southwest Virginia. Residents can find transportation information and earn rewards for carpooling, cycling, transit, and telework by visiting www.ridesolutions.org or downloading the RIDE Solutions app to their mobile device.

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