"Lagos BMX Crew"

After cyclist Brendt Barbur was hit by a bus while riding in New York City, first came the pain and the victim-shaming questions, along the lines of “Why on earth would you ride a bike in New York of all places?”

Then came the Bicycle Film Festival.

In the wake of the accident, Barbur said, “I wanted to do something positive from that experience.” Back then, “the dialogue around cycling was — well, kind of nonexistent — it was very quiet. So I wanted to show people how wonderful and beautiful cycling is.”

When Bicycle Film Festival-Bend, as it’s being billed locally, wheels into the Tower Theatre on Thursday, it will feature an array of national and international short films about mountain biking, road cycling, fat tire and more two-wheeled adventures.

A benefit for Oregon Adaptive Sports, Bicycle Film Festival-Bend is a 105-minute program featuring an array of short films, albeit works from around the nation and world, including subject matter about BMX bike riders in Nigeria, inclusivity of all body types in cycling, and even a film shot in the Corvallis area, said local presenter Rob Crocker.

“They travel all over the world, have a huge following,” said Crocker, the Bend-based president of Index Newspapers, LLC, which among its endeavors, publishes the Portland Mercury and The Stranger, hosts film fests and offers ticket-selling services in Seattle.

From its birth in New York City, the Bicycle Film Festival has mushroomed into the worldwide festival it’s known as now.

“We’ve been to over 100 cities around the world,” including Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Sydney Opera House and Tokyo to name a few, “and all over the United States,” Barbur said. “I’ve traveled a lot and got to meet amazing people, artists, and filmmakers and cyclists.”

In peak years, 100,000 people attend the festival, and as many as 10 participating filmmakers from over the past two decades have gone on to win or be nominated for Academy Awards.

Barbur won’t be in Bend for the local showing, but credited Crocker and his company for “actually (saving) us during COVID” by helping it move online.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, we pivoted one of our in-theater-only film festivals to online,” Crocker explained. When the New York-based Bicycle Film Festival “heard about us (they) reached out to us to help the pivot to virtual, so I’ve worked with them the last two years doing that.”

As the national Bicycle Film Festival was ready to head back into theaters, Crocker, who describes himself as a huge bike enthusiast, “decided it would be awesome to bring this to Bend and do it as a fundraiser for OAS,” he said.

That has caused some confusion in Bend because of Oregon Endurance Academy’s own 14-year-old Bend Bicycle Film Festival, an annual collection of short, local cycling films run by Bend Endurance Academy but absent the past two years due to COVID-19. As recently as this week, if you visit bendbicyclefilmfestival.com, the words atop the page read “2022/Tower Theatre,” followed by, in all caps, “Local short films celebrating cycling in Bend, Oregon.”

“It’s kind of confusing,” Crocker said. Indeed, to the casual observer, the 22-year-old festival coming to town for the first time and screening in the same space, even picking up some of the same sponsors as Bend Bicycle Film Festival, is a touch confusing.

The two festivals’ similar names has created a headache for Ann Leitheiser, development director at Bend Endurance Academy. As part of her position, Leitheiser organizes events for the nonprofit, which also puts on the annual Bend Ski Swap, its biggest fundraiser, and presented the Reel Rock 16, a climbing and adventure film tour, earlier this month.

Both festivals can make a “We were here first” argument. On the one hand, the younger Bend Bicycle Film Festival has a strong local presence and locally known name. Bicycle Film Festival, however, has been around for over two decades, and tacking the presenting city’s name on the end is standard practice.

Through its lifespan, other bike-related film fests using similar names has come up now and then, Barbur said.

“If someone’s using our name, we’ll often call them, but usually they don’t last more than two years,” he said. “Most folks have good intentions, but it’s our name, and obviously, we’ve been doing this a long time. And it’s a good name.”

Barbur hopes to make Bend an annual stop for the Bicycle Film Festival.

“It’s gotten a lot bigger the past few years than we are,” he said. “We still have that grassroots spirit, but we try to keep everything as world-class as we can.”

What: Bicycle Film Festival-Bend

When: 7 p.m. Thursday

Where: Tower Theatre, 835 NW Wall St., Bend

Cost: $17 plus fees, available at tinyurl.com/bikebold

Contact: towertheatre.org or 541-317-0700