There seems to be a lot of great feel-good stuff happening in and around the world of surfing at the moment, so this week’s Brine is going to flip through it all, starting with a big congrats to Jesca Maas and her team for pulling off an excellent first edition of the Noosa International SurfFilm Festival last week.
This is not the first time we’ve hosted surf flicks from around the world in this town, but through hard work and determination, not to mention solid support from the surf community and beyond, Jesca managed to showcase nearly 20 interesting films on the big screen at Noosa Event Cinema over four days while value-adding to the festival experience with Q and A sessions and forums with a great collection of surfers, writers and moviemakers.
I wish I’d been able to see more, but what I did manage to catch was totally engaging, starting with Rebecca Coley’s award-winning Nias doco Point of Change. Having written about the discovery of the famous righthand point break on the island of Nias off Sumatra, and having interviewed Kevin Lovett, one of the three Australians who first surfed it 50 years ago, I was interested in Coley’s clever telling of the tale, with Lovett’s monologue punctuated by equally clever animation and original grainy footage of those first sessions. But beyond that, Coley explores the idea that surf colonisation does not always have happy consequences, as we’ve seen increasingly in Bali.
I also really enjoyed the “long short” film Vinicius, in which directors Jack Kaminski and Mark Duncan tell the mostly unknown story of Brazilian big wave surfer Vini dos Santos, who overcame incredible odds, injuries and other setbacks to ride in 2022 what many regard as the biggest wave ever surfed at Portugal’s Nazaré, estimated to be 97 feet. But it’s not so much the sheer magnitude of his feat that is captivating about Vini. It is the power of his self-belief.
And finally, I just loved the shortest film in the festival, fittingly about the smallest featured surfer. Samuel Fairbanks’ three-minute Book of Hunter presents the lifestyle and philosophy (a work in progress) of new Noosa local Hunter Williams, who has just turned 11. If you’re a keen local surfer you can’t have missed Hunter, who arrived from Victoria with his surf-mad family about 18 months ago.
A good and fast improving all-boarder, Hunter has a perspective on surfing, nature and life that we can all learn from. His innocent charm is totally beguiling and I hope he manages to retain it through the terrible teens, because surfing needs more Hunters.
O is for Outrageous enthusiasm
Speaking of positive forces, did everyone catch surf artist extraordinaire Owen Cavanagh’s sand painted tribute to our Olympic athletes on Coolum Beach (and all over social media) last week?
A quite incredible and spontaneous gesture from the heart of the big bloke whose Studio 53 and Surf Culture Coolum will again be hosting the annual Vintage Surfboard Exhibition and Swap Meet at the end of the month. I’m stoked to be participating in the afternoon’s surfing chat show, this time with the legendary Nev Hyman, the energetic surfer/shaper behind Nev Shapes, Firewire and now Nev Custom.
The last time Nev and I shared a panel show was in front of a full house in 2017 at Lavan Law in Perth during the Whalebone Longboard Classic. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, and I’m looking forward to hearing all about Nev’s latest endeavours, including his recent involvement with 1965 world champ Felipe Pomar in the ambitious Surf To 100 program on Roti, West Timor.
But I’m sure we’ll also manage to squeeze in a few other adventures, like the time he built a 1300 lb, 42-foot surfboard in California, launched it at Huntington Beach during the US Open and paddled 66 surfers into a 12-second wave, setting a new Guinness World Record.
Watch this space for further info about the exhibition and swap meet at Studio 53, 3-7pm 31 August.
Taylor on way to another title
Three-time WSL longboard champion and current number one, Taylor Jensen, who splits his time between Angourie and San Diego, was right at home back in Southern California waters to take out the US Open Longboard at Huntington Beach, his second victory on the trot (following Bells Beach in July) to make him difficult to beat for his fourth world title on the remainder of the tour.
But it wasn’t a walk in the park for the 40-year-old veteran, who had to dispatch two of the form surfers of the event in East Coaster Chase Lieder in the semis and outstanding Filipino surfer Rogelio Esquievel Jr in a gritty final that could have gone either way until Taylor pulled out a trademark long hang 10 for an 8.4 to seal the deal.
California’s Rachel Tilly took out the women’s title from two-times world champ Soleil Errico.
