Indecent
Exposure to Cars
The story of the World
Naked Bike Ride
A movie about people, suspense, intrigue, love and potential
environmental catastrophic collapse.
Our group of highly
entertaining movie makers has set upon a world wide mission
to interview as many of the WNBR organizers as possible and
uncover their personal motives and ambitions for world domination.
You can help us with this project by helping us release this
movie
in your home town.
Click to purchase
All funds raised go to organizing and promoting the World Naked Bike Ride around
the world.
Review of movie in N Magazine
Indecent
Exposure to Cars: The Story of the World Naked Bike Ride!
by Conrad Schmidt. Ragtag Productions, 2007. DVD, 60 minutes. $15.
Ma
The World Naked Bike Ride
is a funky, grassroots, low-budget phenomenon that pedals with both cheer and
gravity amidst moments of brilliant insight and comic disorganization. The same
can be said for Conrad Schmidt’s new video documentary of WNBR, Indecent Exposure to Cars: The Story of the World Naked Bike Ride!
Schmidt, an activist from British Columbia, is the driving force behind WNBR, and the amateur producer and director of the video explaining why he and hundreds of others around the world cycle naked (or nearly so) once a year through the streets of major cities. From the beginning, Schmidt envisioned WNBR as a powerful challenge to oil consumption, a dramaturgical panegyric to the practical benefits of bicycles, and a celebration of the inherent goodness of the human body.
Many naturists are attracted to the latter goal, and to the use of nudity in the pursuit of the former goals. Environmentalists are usually drawn to the ecological stance of WNBR, and have participated in the rides understanding social nudity to be a fun and life-affirming means to an end. Indecent Exposure to Cars gives naturists and non-naturists a clearer idea of what the organizers—Schmidt being only one of many—have intended in their promotion of WNBR.
The DVD opens incongruously with a thong-wearing Schmidt topped in a pink T-shirt introducing the idea of the rides. Before viewers have enough time to ask why Schmidt is in such an outfit, a history of bicyclists and our growing dependence on cars begins. Schmidt then inserts scenes intended to be funny, but which merit severe editing or deletion. The video’s initial history of bicycles, cars, and our disastrous reliance on oil provide sufficient justification for the creation of WNBR.
The latter half of the video is stronger as viewers get to hear from a variety of local WNBR organizers, a majority of whom have been women. Schmidt then provides what most will be looking for: WNBR scenes from around the globe.
Schmidt told N that he intends the video to be an effective “way for ride organizers to share their experiences with each other.” Many, he said, are not aware of the hard work and success of others. Also, he wants to get across “the scope and size of the event.” Not only is it truly worldwide, but many of these public rides are huge, attracting hundreds of riders.
Indecent Exposure to Cars, Schmidt continued, should “help people know of the event, and make it bigger and bigger.” That it may do, as anyone watching the smiles on the riders’ faces and hearing the cheers of observers encouraging the naked cyclists along cannot but want to give it a try in 2007.
The video takes only passing note of the problems some riders have faced in cities or more rural locations as local police upon occasion manifest a dim view of any form of public nudity. Nor does it address the countless hours organizers put in, often with nothing but complaints about the weather, the event dates, or how a ride is organized—and always, it seems, from people who are doing zilch to make the ride move forward. Still, Schmidt clarifies the goals of WNBR for those who give a rip about the health of our world and who understand the power of nudity to affect social change.