Bruce & Tass Bicycle China
The doors are closed. There are no more screenings of this film.
Synopsis: World cyclists, adventurers, authors, photographers, and husband and wife team, Bruce B. Junek and Tass Thacker share behind the scenes glimpses of their 3½-month bicycling trip across southern China, the Tibetan Plateau, and the Gobi Desert.
Their primary goal was making photographs during the trip to create an educational slide program on China to be shown in schools. The film reveals the behind the scenes of their extraordinary adventure. The madcap reality of bicycling through China in 2011 when there were no printed maps with detail, and no phone maps at all. Their only navigation was a simple handlebar compass to find their way across cities with millions people, and wind through the countryside to reach supposedly remote rural villages, never knowing where they would spend each night.
Bruce and Tass embrace Chinese culture and seek out a fascinating variety of colorful and unique celebrations and festivals from China’s many different minority ethnic groups. They visit temples, mosques, churches and an array of local shrines and pilgrimage sites, and witness a three-day Tibetan Buddhist festival with multiple body piercings and shamans in full trance.
The film is also a love story about two people married for 36 years who still share the same dreams, goals and commitments to a unique lifestyle. Don’t miss this fascinating adventure!
***ENCORE BHFF 2015***
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Director's Statement
Tass and I make our living giving educational slide presentations of our travels in schools, festivals and community events. The slide program emphasis is not on us, but more focused on the unique and interesting things we see and learn about each country along the way. Audiences always want to know more about our hardships, our travel logistics, and how we get along.
This film answers those questions, and shows the humorous, gritty, day-to-day actuality of what we experience in making one of our journeys. In 2011 GoPro cameras had just come out. I bought two, along with a fist-sized Canon HD video camera, batteries and accessories so that I could, at last, film, edit, direct, narrate and produce my first feature-length documentary film. I hope you enjoy it. Hold on to your handlebars!
Director's Bio
Bruce B. Junek is a speaker, author, photographer and adventurer. In 1987 he and his wife, Tass Thacker, created Images of the World, a series of educational slide programs they give in schools and at community events. To date nearly 2 million people have seen their presentations.
Bruce filmed, edited, directed, narrated and produced Bruce & Tass Bicycle China. He has also written two travel narratives. The Road of Dreams chronicles their 26-month bicycle trip around the world. Andes to the Amazon is about seven journeys through Mexico, Central and South America.
Under the pen name B. Burgess Junek he has written The Foundling of Dayr Castle and Death of Innocence, books 1 & 2 of the four-part adventure fantasy A Bright One Chronicles, with books 3 & 4 coming out in 2022.
Their website is www.imagesoftheworld.com
