3 documentaries hit the beach
to show off the best and the worst
surf experiences around the world
"The Swell Life" and "Imagine: Surfing As Sadhana"Screens at noon tomorrow at Hawai'i Convention Center. Also, 5 p.m. Friday at the Maui Ritz Carlton Ballroom; 12:30 p.m. Sunday at Keauhou Shopping Center's Paniolo Room on the Big Island; and 7 p.m. Sunday at Kauai Community College Video Site.
"Laird"
Screens with the two films above, plus 8:30 p.m. Saturday at Kilauea Theatre on Kauai.
Reviews by Tim Ryan The three surfing documentaries in this year's Hawai'i International Film Festival -- "The Swell Life," "Laird" and "Imagine: Surfing As Sadhana" -- take the ancient Hawaiian sport well beyond the beach, daring to show the good, the rad and the oh-so-ugly.
tryan@starbulletin.com"Imagine ..." is a sort of "Endless Summer" with a wonderful catalogue of mostly unseen quality surf spots around the world, in Chile, Morocco, the Canary Islands, India and Brazil. The movie follows three surfers -- pro Christian Enns, 17-year-old Roxy clothing model Veronica Kay, and Kelly Slater's younger brother -- on what would seem to be a magical journey.
Beyond simply riding perfect empty waves, the film aims to explore surfing as a spiritual practice and capture the essence of wave riding.
The waves are so good for so long in some places and the journey so sweet that our adventurers get bored. They reject the aesthetics of their travel and surfing to sneak away halfway through the trip, leaving the filmmaker stranded in Sri Lanka and desperate to figure out how to salvage his search for surfing salvation.
This is one of those rare surf films that actually tells an interesting story, mixed with wave riding that experienced surfers can relate to. Though we see pros like Joel Tudor and Rob Machado perform unearthly maneuvers in impossible situations, the viewer also sees "unknowns" pull off some amazing glides.
There's a segment showing Enns alone at a double overhead, thundering right point surf in Morocco with no discernible channel for escape. There's also some soul surfing in Australia by Aussies, Germans and Americans, who, like back in the '60s, relish their lack of material items.Which brings us to "Laird," a quick study of Kauai-born and raised Laird Hamilton, son of respected '60s stylist Billy Hamilton. Laird wasn't satisfied just with riding waves on a surfboard, so he took up sailboarding, which we watch from a helicopter that seems to have difficulty keeping up with the blistering speed of Hamilton's water craft off Ho'okipa, Maui.
Laird is best known for tow-in surfing -- where the wave rider is pulled by a jet ski into giant surf -- and a potentially killer wave he rode earlier this year in Tahiti at Teahupoo.
There's so much excellent footage of Laird being towed into 40-foot waves at Maui's Jaws that I found myself tiring of watching him make wave after impossible wave. Teahupoo makes the Banzai Pipeline look like Queen's Surf. The wave is a solid wall of water for a half mile down the beach before hitting the very shallow reef, breaking to the left. Surfers have died here.
In a historic ride, we see Laird towed into a 20-foot wall, barely making it to the bottom, then crouching before disappearing into a whoosh of whitewater and blown out to safety.
"The Swell Life" marks a rapid descent into the dismal state of localism in California, which is pretty well summed up with video of a surfer defecating on the car hood of an "outsider" and the ensuing fight. We see "local" surfers from adults to teenagers acting like Neanderthals, verbally intimidating or threatening violence at visitors who are considering surfing there.
The Oxnard-Silver Strand-Hollywood-by-the-Sea surfers' gang mindset justifies their actions with the excuse that outsiders litter the beaches or are dangerous because they're inexperienced. A 17-year-old Oxnard surfer convicted of breaking a Los Angeles school teacher's rib complains that "of course" a court would believe a teacher rather than a high school student. Two 13-year-old surfers agree it's acceptable to wax an outsider's car window or beat him up if he takes off in front of a local.
In one of the lowest examples of how territorialism has gotten out of hand, "The Swell Life" shows a man in his late 30s at Lunada Bay in Palos Verdes screaming at outsiders and blocking their path to the beach, followed by a local police chief rationalizing his actions by saying even non-surfers don't like outsiders.
Lucky you live Hawaii.
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