The Palast Der Republik was the venue of the first Berlin City Games, a pro and amateur flatland contest. The DVD we received in the FATBMX mailbox arrived right before the [url=//fatbmx.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=923]second edition of the City Games[/url] and consisted solely about Berlin City Games 1 (2004). The production of the DVD was of a very high level as was the quality of the filming.
It starts off with a 30 minute highlight of the event which, I believe, is the best part of the DVD. All the better tricks are pulled and edited to a 30 minute DVD of great flatland from pros (Kuoppa, Penonzek, Jumelin, Mike S., Sauter, Chiquet, Roese) to amateurs, a.o. Dez and Sytse from Holland. Jesse Puente gets a separate part in the bonus section but they might have well stuck the extra clips in the video itself. The bonus section also shows the work that goes into putting on a flatland contest (more than you'd think) and the separate runs from all pro and amateur finalists. This resulted in a bit of an anti-climax in the DVD because it shows that the pros and ams do get off their bikes during their runs on a few occasions. The DVD doesn't show the results of the contest so you can take the footage and pretend that you're a judge. You can compare your scores with the results that you can find in the BMX FREESTYLE section on FATBMX.com. Look for the 2004 results, not the 2005. Now that we're critique-ing the great flatland DVD, we also have to mention that Christophe Dassie in the video is in fact Alain Massabova, but that's how far the negatives will go.
If you ride flatland, you can't go wrong with the Berlin City Games DVD, you'll love the bonus sections too. Try to get one through Matti Roese or the people at the Mellowpark in Berlin (Jens Werner).
BdJ
After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.