“Anybody can own a bike and anybody can ride a bike” is the mantra of veteran motorcyclist Jack Drury. The former punk and metal rocker has spent his entire career as an event producer trying to prove it: this Sunday in Williamsburg, his Bored, Stroked, Port vintage-motorcycle block party celebrates its 10th year of shattering the stereotype of “tough guys, violence, and Orange County Choppers,” and next month he’ll bring Brooklyn’s first motorcycle film festival to Williamsburg and Greenpoint.
“It seems like every motorcycle builder these days has an in-house filmmaker, and there’s been this amazing wave of creativity,” Drury told Bedford + Bowery. “Filmmakers can show bikers as they want to be shown – not how someone at a studio with preconceived notions wants to show them.”
Along with Corinna Mantlo, a motorcycle customizer who curates the weekly biker and hot rod film series at Lady Jay’s called Cine Meccanica, Drury sent out an open call to bikers and filmmakers for shorts, docs, narratives, and experimental films. He expected most submissions to be documentaries about vintage bikes or groups of bikers, but he’s received piles of fictional narratives as well. The submission period is still underway, and will be until August 23.
Mantlo and Drury originally dreamed of renting out a movie theater for the festival, but the idea fizzled when they learned it would be “astronomically expensive.” Drury doesn’t think they’ve lost anything by deciding to hold the screenings at metal haven Saint Vitus in Greenpoint and Over the Eight in Williamsburg.
“There’s something so fun about going to a bar for movie night,” he said. “It’s egalitarian, and it fosters more of a sense of togetherness than everybody going to the theater and then sitting quietly in their seats.”
The screenings (two feature-length docs and two narratives, each accompanied by several shorts) will last from September 26 to 28, and each will be followed by an afterparty and concert at either Lone Wolf in Bushwick or St. Vitus. Confirmed bands so far include Hector’s Pet, the Andy Animal Family Band, The Tombstone Brawlers, and Purple k’niF. The complete line-up of films and bands will be announced the first week in September.
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