BICYCLE DREAMS

  AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY FILM ABOUT 

RACE ACROSS AMERICA

COMING TO BLOOMINGTON JULY 31

Bicycle Dreams, the award-winning feature-length documentary about Race Across America (RAAM), will premiere in Bloomington as part of the film’s ongoing nationwide tour on Sunday, July 31, at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater at 7 p.m. The event is sponsored by the Bloomington Bicycle Club. Tickets are $10 in advance, at www.buskirkchumley.org .

Race Across America is considered by many to be the most challenging sporting event in the world. The 3,000-mile coast-to-coast race, in its 30th year, was held last month and passed through Bloomington on its way to the finish line in Annapolis, Maryland.

The film, which 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. Hopefully, many of them were able to see it all first-hand when the racers come through Bloomington last month.”

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.