CINE VELÓ CITÉ
Cinema as a Social and European Public Practice
CINÉ VÉLO CITÉ (CVC) is a bicycle-powered mobile cinema and film laboratory developed by artist and filmmaker Patrik Thomas. The project understands cinema as a social, spatial, and pedagogical practice that unfolds through movement, encounter, and collective viewing in public space.
The initial prototype of CVC was developed within the EU-funded program Creating NEBourhoods Together, focusing on sustainable cultural infrastructures and neighborhood-based participation. In parallel, the project was embedded in a teaching assignment at Hochschule München, led by Prof. Andrea Benze and Patrik Thomas, where students and young participants explored how mobile cinema can function as a social meeting point in urban contexts.
Conceptually and methodologically, CVC builds on long-term artistic and pedagogical research. The project is informed by experiences from BOALÂNDIA, a documentary film on Brazilian cineclub movements and cultural resistance, which demonstrated how cinema can actively occupy public space as a tool of visibility, self-organization, and political expression. Equally important are the years of applied action-oriented film pedagogy developed within MOVIMENTO, a collaborative film laboratory and residency format founded in Portugal, where collective authorship, low-threshold production, and learning through practice formed the basis of the work.
CVC originated from collaborative workshops with young people in Munich-Neuperlach, examining how cities are represented in film, whose perspectives dominate these images, and how authorship can be shared. Participants produced short films, developed concepts for improvised open-air bicycle cinemas, and tested cinema as a tool for dialogue, learning, and spatial appropriation.
Since 2023, CINÉ VÉLO CITÉ has realized more than 70 public screenings and workshops in and around Munich. The project has collaborated with festivals, schools, cultural institutions, and civil society initiatives and has served as a mobile venue and film lab for DOK.fest Munich and the SPIELART Festival. Guest appearances in Brussels and Leipzig have further positioned CVC within a growing European network of mobile and participatory cinema practices.
With its modular, low-threshold setup, CVC enables screenings, workshops, and discussions that respond to local histories while addressing shared European questions of mobility, belonging, memory, and democratic participation. Cinema is treated not as a finished product, but as a collective process and a temporary cultural commons in public space.
More information: www.cinevelocite.de