Open Air Cinema's Revolutionary Bicycle Cinema Systems

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At Open Air Cinema, we're always striving to make a positive difference in the world through screening powerful films on outr outdoor theater systems. In January of this year the founder and owner of Open Air Cinema, Stuart Farmer, travelled to Kiev, Ukraine to fulfill an invitation to screen the Oscar nominated documentary The Square in the Maidan - the main protest square where revolutionary events changed the course of Ukraine's history. Although the main screening (see the video of the event below...) took place on an Open Air Cinema inflatable screen, it quickly became clear that another method was needed to help spread the messages of protest through outdoor cinema. В It was out of this need that the bicycle cinema system was first developed - an outdoor theater entirely powered by the pedal strokes the audience.

Since the initial bicycle cinema system was utilized in Kiev, we've continued to develop it in advance of releasing it as an official Open Air Cinema product. В In the coming weeks we'll be posting updates about the development of bicycle cinema here on the official OAC blog. After the initial screenings in Ukraine, we established an event production team based in Kiev and outfitted them with several bicycle cinema systems as well as an inflatable movie screen and complete system. Stuart is back in Kiev at the moment producing screenings with the team. We'll also be posting updates on their endeavors on a weekly basis.

For this first post, we asked one of our Research and Development team members, Sam, В who's been heading up the development of OAC's bicycle cinema, to introduce us to the concept. We started with the question - "what is bicycle cinema?".

More updates soon on the development of bicycle cinema and screenings in Kiev and around the Ukraine!

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What is bicycle cinema?

The idea behind bicycle cinema is empower people with a tool to spread content and ideas in a way that is both mobile and engaging. Everything you need to project a movie or documentary fits onto a regular bicycle, including a system to power a projector and speakers. We have designed a unique stand that attaches to your bicycle and can be deployed in a few seconds to transform a bicycle into a stationary pedal-powered generator. A battery pack is included to act as a buffer so constant pedaling is not needed. A crowd of 30 people can enjoy a film and volunteer to pedal for 5 or 10 minutes each. People become connected to the content. They become involved. People really seem to love it. At the Bicycle Collective in PortlandВ we tested our cinema system by playing the Portland Trailblazers basketball game at their anniversary party. It was a huge success. The crowd took ownership of generating power for the projector and remained engaged for the entire time - it was a lot of fun. We actually ended up leaving with more energy in our batteries than we showed up with. I think that's the best testament to the feasibility of pedal power. The generators have improved and the power requirements for our equipment have been reduced such that pedal powered cinema is now really possible for the first time. We have worked long and hard to come up with a solution that is lightweight and super efficient. That being said, we are also investigating implementing a motor-assist system so to increase the range of the mobile cinema. We have a working prototype that does both assist and generative pedaling that was built in collaboration with Wake and Chad from the eBikeStore in Portland. They are true geniuses.