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June 2024
Traveling around the world with cycling movies
A lot has been written of late about how the current COVID-19 pandemic measures are influencing mobility in our daily lives. Car traffic is down, as well as public transport. In many places, walking and cycling are on the rise. A growing number of cities are taking action to create safe space in the streets to facilitate this appetite for the active modes.
Apart from impact on daily life, the measures are also having a big impact on our ability to travel to other places. Many people had planned to take their holidays to visit new and/or favourite places, but with various travel restrictions in place, will likely end up making the best of a ‘staycation’.
But don’t fret! For those who had planned to have a cycling holiday in another country, we present an alternative idea: Traveling around the world with cycling movies!
The idea is simple: although we are not able to physically travel to places further away, we can still go on a cycle world tour. There are myriad cycling films and documentaries from all over the world that we can watch from the comfort of our home. Along with interesting storylines and landscapes, these movies share stories of the diversity of cycling cultures and how people deal with them. The films can be refreshing or eye-opening, serving to be a suitable substitute for what many people hope to find during their cycling holiday. We know they are not quite the same as being there in person, and that it certainly would have been nice to explore these places on a bike ourselves, but we hope this provides a good way to relax and find joy in cycling.
In order to help you getting started with your own cycling movie world tour, we have created an interactive map with a number of cycling movies and documentaries from around the world. And because we know that this is not by no means a complete list, we have created the map so that anyone can add their own favourite films and documentaries! We invite you to share your knowledge of which cycling movies are out there and invite others to do the same!
We are kicking off our cycling tour in Amsterdam, where we meet Mama Agatha, who teaches migrant women to cycle. The documentary is about more than that, however. It gives a warm glimpse of Agatha’s life and her motivations to help other women. Then we cycle to Paris to re-watch The Triplets of Bellville. I first saw this movie back in 2003, after I had attended one of my first Velo-city conferences. It is a wonderful combination of an endearing storyline, clever animation, and a beautifully score. You can see and feel the Tour the France happening and the struggles to keep going. Very much worth a re-watch!
We hope you find inspiration for your world cycling tour in films on our map and look forward to seeing which films you share with us!
CLICK THROUGH to our interactive map to see some of our top picks.
Be Sure to add your favourites and help build our crowdsourced list: https://tinyurl.com/yb5ex2kc
This map is a collaborative effort of our Mobycon team, with special thanks to Jason Colbeck, Giorgia Berrevoets and Benjamin Lang.