Jolyon Hoff’s ambitious and immensely worthy Surf Film Archive project is entering its third year of finding, scanning and restoring Australia and New Zealand’s lost surf film footage, and the job is only just getting started.
“The deeper we get, the more important we realise this cultural history project is,” says Jolyon, a documentary film-maker originally from Adelaide and back living there now. “The film is fading away and it’s getting lost or mouldy. The filmmakers are getting older and their children don’t know what to do with those rusty old film cans. We have to do this now, before it’s too late.”
That’s more or less what Jolyon had told me when he visited me in Noosa right at the start of Covid. I’d first met the guy about a dozen years earlier when he’d interviewed me for his first surf-related doco Searching For Michael Peterson, a well-crafted film that enjoyed considerable success, and also alerted Jolyon to the revelation that veteran film-makers like Dick Hoole and Russell Shepherd were sitting on a fast-rotting treasure trove of historic footage. It might have been then that Jolyon started to formulate his archive concept, but in fact he embarked on a human rights awareness campaign that truly showed the measure of the man.
Living in Jakarta, Jolyon met a group of Afghan refugees, waiting on longshot opportunities to start a new life. This led to The Staging Post, a vivid and moving rendition of their story, released in 2017. But as good as it was, The Staging Post struggled to find mainstream distribution, so Jolyon took it on the road, showing it in pubs, clubs and town halls, wherever he could draw a crowd of people interested in human rights injustices. It was hard work for little reward, most of which he and his Afghan associates poured back into refugee schools, but the whole time he was road-showing, he kept thinking, this was what the old surf movie guys used to do, so it’s good enough for me.
Another film, Watandar, My Countryman followed, telling the story of the Afghan cameleers of South Australia, but by 2020 Jolyon was also totally invested in saving Australia’s cinematic surf history from extinction. By 2021 he had set up a network of surf film veterans who supported the concept and shared it with all the “backyarders” who had trained their old cameras on the action from the beach or a rocky outcrop, purely for their own entertainment. By 2022 he had a restoration team working full-time on the project and last March, he and the team brought the first taste of their efforts to the Noosa Surf Museum for a screening during the Noosa Festival of Surfing.
By the end of the year he was screening beautifully remastered ‘60s and ‘70s classics like Bob Evans’ 1965 High On A Cool Wave, the Sheppard Brother’s A Winter’s Tale and David Sumpter’s On Any Morning at festivals and surf gatherings around the coastline, accompanied by live bands.
Says Jolyon: “These films are a one-time record of a never-to-be-repeated era in Australia’s history. It has influenced so many of us, and who we are as Australians. No-one else captured this era with the raw and authentic honesty of the early surf filmmakers. We have to make sure their contribution to Australia’s modern history is valued and recognised.”
The business model for The Surf Film Archive is fair and simple – screening rights over remastered films are shared between the creator and the Archive. But the project is a long way from break-even point, and it needs all the help it can get from surfers and surfcos who want to see our history preserved. A pre-Christmas fundraiser with a Bob McTavish Plastic Machine one of many great prizes in the draw helped raise around $15,000, and commercial support is growing, but it needs the support of common or garden variety surfers like us.
If you need convincing, visit thesurffilmarchive.com.au and have a troll around the restored works. It’s free. Having a lazy afternoon recovering from a hectic session on the points these holidays, I found myself laughing out loud watching the Double Island snippet from High On A Cool Wave, with narrator Bob Evans saying gravely, “Just getting across the Noosa River in the creaky old punt is an adventure in itself.” Yes, but in 1965 you didn’t have to queue for half a day!
I also loved the backyarder footage of the late great Trevor Elms (Currumbin Kruby) and David Sams tearing it up with forgotten style on the Oahu North Shore. There’s so much good stuff here it can keep you away from the Big Bash.
To help out this worthwhile project – which has already inspired our own Sunny Coast archive search, more about that in coming weeks – hit the shop tab at thesurffilmarchive.com.au and buy a cool poster from $30.
FOOTNOTE: A busy New Year weekend in and out of the surf, but fortunately we managed to get down to the Harbour Wine Bar to catch the afternoon set from the irrepressible, ageless Barry Charles who wailed over his full six-octave range to the delight of the early revellers. After half a century entertaining Noosa crowds, the legend only gets better.
