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Photos courtesy of Filmed by Bike and its volunteers.

While you may have missed the third annual Filmed by Bike festival of cyclocentric short movies from around the world, there’s plenty of time to crank the cinematographic gears in your head and get those wheels and reels spinning for next year.

From April 16-18, a selection of movies with a maximum running time of eight minutes were screened at Portland’s Clinton Street Theater, on top of which perched a massive golden helmet for the duration of the festival. While the films were not necessarily filmed from a bike, bikes did play a central role in each one.

The festival kicked off with a street party that included DJs, dancing, live entertainment, a raffle, a beer garden and a full bicycle parking lot.

From the mass convergence of bicycle and film enthusiasts arose two winners: Robin Moore won the Golden Helmet Award for best overall film and $250 US for Performance, a rap boasting the superiority of expensive dialed-in racing bikes and Lars C. Larsen won the Go Independent! Award and $250 US for his use of independent music in Go! Paperboy!

While the festival doesn’t travel beyond Portland, a compilation DVD is available from the festival’s website and some of the videos have been posted online.

It’s all scheduled to happen again next April, but the next crop of films have to be created first. The deadline for submissions is February 2011.

For submission requirements or to check out some of this year’s films, go to FilmedbyBike.org.