Documentary: The Bicycle City
Crippled by decades of military dictatorship, civil war, and environmental catastrophe, Nicaragua is the second poorest country in Latin America, having one of the region’s lowest GDPs and the second highest Human Poverty Index, behind only Haiti. Economic opportunities are few and those born into the lower classes tend to remain in poverty for life.
Over the past 20 years, more than 20,000 bicycles have been brought into Rivas, a city on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast, by the non-profit Pedals for Progress, which collects donated bicycles in the United States and distributes them in impoverished communities worldwide. Since the first was unloaded in Rivas in 1991, the bicycle has become an integral part of daily life.
The Bicycle City. Trailer from Greg Sucharew on Vimeo.
Told from the vantage points of Julia, the street vendor; Xiomara, the young mother; Joaquin, the entrepreneur; and David, the unlikely philanthropist, The Bicycle City is the story of how an idealistic experiment has helped the war-ravaged city of Rivas find its own path to recovery and normalcy through the introduction of cheap, reliable transportation in the form of the bicycle.
The Bicycle City is currently in post-production, and the filmmakers are taking donations to help complete the film and bring it to audiences as quickly as possible. Show your support here.
