From the relative chaos of Copenhagen, to the cozy confines of the collectively-owned, car-free community they call the Free Town, I hope this video sheds some light on the mythical neighborhood of Christiania — the birthplace of the Christiania Bikes.
The video does a great job, visually, of telling the story that I wanted, or have been meaning to tell, so I’ll stop with the cursory intro and let it do the talking.
I do, however, think it necessary to point out how this all came into being, so here is the director’s cut text…
Since starting Boxcycles over a year ago, I have, from time to time and with varying degrees of success, tried to tell the story of where these crazy bikes come from. The short of it is: from a crazy place.
But Christiania is hard to describe with photos and even harder to do on the written page. A previous post of mine, gave a photographic and written introduction, but, to be honest, the real magic is in the atmosphere, action, and attitude of the community — which is impossible to feel without movement. So, since starting this wild ride, I have wanted to document it on film — perhaps the most honest way of capturing the soul of Christiania for those who can’t actually be there.
Enter Adam…
My best bud in Copenhagen is a globetrotting photo/videographer named Adam Jeppesen. Over the past few years he has called the road his home, and has recently completed an 18 month journey from the North Pole to the South Pole which culminated in a dynamic documentary/fine art exhibition called Beyonder. It might be relevant to note that, aside from a few boat trips to get to the polar regions and some buses through a few stretches of Central America, most of the trip was made by bike — not a Christiania. Though we did entertain the thought!
Upon completion of his epic journey, Adam had to ‘go see about a girl’ in Buenos Aires and since then, has more or less been living there. He makes it back to Copenhagen here and there — if only for a few days — and we usually catch up as best we can given our increasingly hectic lives. Somehow, god willing, I coaxed him into the idea of taking his last two stops in Copenhagen to produce a short film about Christiania and the bikes. After agreeing, we jammed this whole ‘production’ into two sessions.
TAKE 1 & 2:
The filming took place in August and consisted, simply, of two 10-minute rides — one right after the next — with Adam in the box and me pedaling. That day, luck was on our side — the sun started to peak out just as we got ‘rolling’, and by the time we had finished filming 20 minutes later, the light was actually quite harsh. You might even notice that in the right frame, at the end of the film, it is dramatically more sunny than the left frame.
FINAL CUT:
Then, just this past week, Adam headed back into town for a stopover, before continuing on to Paris for an exhibition. We spent one night ‘strategizing’ at a Bob Dylan & Mark Knopfler concert in Sweden and then pulled off a quick final cut at around 1:30 am on Saturday – fueled by his new drink of choice, maté.
The final product is just what I was looking for – it’s free-flowing, ragged, in-the-moment, totally honest, and happened over good times with a great friend. Very much in the spirit of Christiania.
Tusind tak to Adam for making time for this and godspeed in your continuing adventures, mi amigo…
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Posted on: Tuesday, November 8th, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Posted in: news
Tags: boxcycles, christiania, christiania bikes, copenhagen, video