Local cyclists are coming together Friday to share the fruits of their wheels — and reels — at the 10th annual 2018 Bend Bicycle Film Festival.

Festival director and cyclist Bill Warburton said the catalyst for the festival is celebrating the array of cycling that Central Oregon caters to.

“The original idea is to get together and get stoked on the riding season,” Warburton said. “We need everyone to get together, meet up downtown and drink beer outside of our riding clothes.”

Warburton co-founded The Bend Bicycle Film Festival in 2009 as a fundraiser for the Bend Endurance Academy. Warburton is the cycling director at the nonprofit, which also offers nordic skiing and climbing instruction to junior and adult athletes of varying abilities.

At this year’s festival, a dozen short films made the cut. They’ll be screened in two 45-minute segments, punctuated by an intermission and a raffle for a paddleboard.

About a dozen submissions that don’t have a connection to Bend were declined, Warburton said, although he enjoyed watching them.

“We’ve gotten stuff from all over the world,” Warburton said. “People looking for bicycle film festivals find our website. It’s kind of fun to see what people are up to. But most of the local riders will get their movies in — especially if they’re nice and short.”

The ideal length ranges from 90 seconds to five minutes. Beyond that mark, films need to have a strong structure to carry the narrative.

“People want to be told a story, and they want to be engaged in it,” Warburton said.

Several years ago, a film best described as a bicycle whodunit — wherein a bike gets chopped to pieces — won over the audience. Each year’s top film is selected by the crowd’s applause, shortlisting its five favorites. Warburton breaks ties by leading the crowd in a sudden death cheer-off. Throughout the festival, the louder you are, the better, he said.

“We want the audience to be really verbal and shout out anything they’re thinking, give feedback and clap and cheer really loud for their friends,” Warburton said. “We like it when everyone is a little bit rowdy. It makes it more fun.”

The films — most of which were actually shot on video — range from burly mountain bike edits featuring teenage riders to documentaries of two-wheeled adventures.

And more films are trickling in.

“We’re still waiting to see if we’re going to get one in the comedy (genre),” Warburton said. “We usually get one or two that is insider bicycle humor. There’s some road bike and gravel stuff. It’s just interesting to see what people come up with.”

Mountain biker Asa Silver, 14, is a second-time submitter. A freshman at Summit High School, Silver has made steady progress not only on the trails but in his filming and editing. Warburton, who previously coached Silver through BEA, took notice. This year, Silver’s short, “Last Minute,” is a sweeping collection of mountain bike feats he and his friends conquered on local trails. When Silver recently broke his collar bone while riding an electric skateboard, he put his downtime to use, editing his three-minute film a couple hours each day for a week.

“Asa is getting some cool shots,” Warburton said. “He’s flying drones and learning all kinds of cool techniques to make his videos more interesting.”

Silver learned some video skills in a broadcast class he took in middle school. He’s looking forward to furthering his skills in a photography class when he begins high school in the fall.

Arlie Connolly, 12, and his father, Nathan Connolly, co-created a four-minute mountain bike edit called “Full Speed.” It features Arlie ripping on trails and culminates with him throwing down the famously challenging terrain at Whistler, Canada.

While Arlie’s riding surpassed Nathan Connolly’s years ago, his father continues to teach his son how to piece together video snippets. The Connollys travel widely for Arlie’s mountain biking contests, which has opened the boy’s world, Nathan Connolly said.

“It’s given Arlie the perspective that the world is bigger than the immediate fishbowl we live in,” said Nathan Connolly, 44. “The local middle school drama might not mean as much as it otherwise would. He can carry himself with a level of confidence.”

Bend bikepackers Ville and Kristen Jokinen will present “Right Side of Normal,” a short documentary they made that concludes the second half of their 20-month, 18,215-mile cycling journey from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina. The first film installment of the Jokinens’ journey, called “Following my wife …,” screened at last year’s festival. While the short documentaries feature plenty of dramatic vistas and hair-raising traffic situations, the real focus in the couple’s films are the people they met.

“There were places where people live in a shack and there is no running water. Animals run loose in the yard, and the well or the toilet is down the hill,” said Kristen Jokinen, 37. “We’d ask those people to camp (in their yard), and they always asked us to come to their house and to eat. We’d go and it would be a big plate of white rice and fish they just caught. Those experiences happened over and over again.”

Some filmmakers are still adding finishing touches to their submissions.

Todd Looby is polishing his film about his bike-loving son, Seamus, who’s 5. This short, “Hometown Hero,” is the third that Looby has entered in the festival — all of which follow his son’s progression on two wheels. His first short, “Terrible Twos,” won the audience award in 2016. The latest film, which features Seamus ripping on a mountain bike, was fueled by the boy’s admiration for local professional mountain bike rider Carson Storch, whose footage Looby showed his son.

“I don’t know if that was a mistake or not,” Looby said with a laugh. “Seamus has taken off with biking. He’s always pushing the boundaries of safety and the kinds of trails he should be on for his age.”

Looby, 43, is also the director of the BendFilm Festival. He said film has an extraordinary power to bring people together and inspire action. And film festivals are “great springboards” for people take their work to the next level.

“Film is our most important art form,” Lobby said. “Film festivals get more people making movies in a really low-pressure atmosphere. When you have a lot of people running around telling their stories, it just strengthens our community, without a doubt.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7816, pmadsen@bendbulletin.com