Have you ever wondered how you fry an egg whilst riding a bike? Or play an instrument, send an email, flirt… None of these things, of course, are to be recommended for safety reasons (apart, perhaps, from flirt) but for Montreal-based advertising agency copywriter – and video artist – Guillaume Blanchet it’s all in a day’s work. Or more accurately 382 day’s work, as that’s the time he spent pedaling through his adopted city to create his quite sublime film The Man Who Lived on His Bike which, amongst an almost embarrassing number of awards and nominations, has recently taken the Audience Award at the VELOBerlin Film Festival.
French-born Blanchet says, ‘(I) left my homeland to settle down in Montreal seven years ago. Working in advertising as a copy writer has always enabled me- and still does – to meet many talented people such as directors, actors, musicians, photographs… ??I have become more and more interested by the other side of creative advertising: the image. The image has become quite an adventure for me, a risky one opened to criticism, far from the security that I feel I have with words.’ He dedicates the film to his father Yves who he reports has ridden his bike over 120,000km, although, as far as Cyclo knows, his father never fried an egg on the bike. Enjoy…
THE MAN WHO LIVED ON HIS BIKE from Guillaume Blanchet on Vimeo.
