Burundi Finally Makes Me Famous, Sorta

I'll finally swagger on the world wide web what I've been bragging about, to anyone in-person who will listen, for the last two months: I am an independent filmmaker with a short film debuting soon in an international film festival in the US!

That's real soon, in fact, next weekend April 15 - 17 at a yearly Portland, Oregon lovefest known as Filmed By Bike.  Portland's got a great bike culture and a great arts culture, and when those two get in bed together they make a freaky love child, a film fest dedicated to bike-themed film shorts.

After a raucous street party on Friday night April 15 with 3 evening sessions featuring the craziest of this year's crop, my little vid is gonna show during Shorts Program B, on at 5 p.m. Saturday April 16 (all ages show) and 9 p.m. Sunday April 17 (21+).

Here's the listing:

Burundi’s Biking Bananas | 2:55
Joe Lapp – Africa
Joe goes down into the heart of Africa and documents how much cargo can be carried by the simplest of bikes, including the speed-demon, daredevil banana bikers.

I lived in Burundi for just shy of a year back in 2009.  There, biking's about as much fun as one can have in a country near the bottom of the world's development list, and so I hit the pedals a lot.  Luckily, I also did enough documentary work on the local cargo bike culture that I could pull off my film festival debut.

To check out a few of the stills featured in my film, click over to my Burundi blog.  There's a post about the video, and plenty of blog entries about my biking adventures in Burundi's hills.

My friend Mike Vogel's got a fabulous short on, too, "Right Hook."  It's showing same times as mine, and also in the Friday night sessions.

If you're lucky enough to be anywhere near Portland next weekend (I'm stuck in Ghana), get your bike-shorts-wearing butt to FBB.  And this ain't your grandma's film festival, so be ready to live it up and cheer your (head) off.