
The Spokesman
James Macdonald has spent years assembling something unusual: one bicycle from every developmental stage the machine has passed through, from early wooden-framed models to modern racing builds. This short portrait follows him through his collection, letting him explain what each bike represents and why he felt compelled to track them down one by one. The film treats him as a character first and a historian second, lingering on his manner and his workshop as much as on the mechanics of gear ratios or frame geometry. There is no narrator standing outside the story; Macdonald carries it himself, describing the search for each missing piece the way another collector might describe hunting down a rare book. The result is less a survey of bicycle history than a study of the kind of person who decides, on his own, that someone ought to preserve it, and then spends a life doing exactly that.