Surf film


Surf movies fall into three distinct genres:
The sporting documentary film was pioneered by Bud Browne in the 1940s and early 1950s, and later popularized by Bruce Brown in the late 1950s and early 1960s, then later perfected by Greg MacGillivray and Jim Freeman in the 1970s and beyond. The genre in itself has been defined by surfers, traveling with their friends and documenting the experience on film. In the 'heyday' of Bruce Brown, Greg Noll, Bud Brown, John Severson, films were projected for rambunctious fans in music halls, civic centers and high school auditoriums.
During the 1980s, the market for surf films surged with the release of more affordable video cameras. By the 1990s, the surfing market became saturated with low and medium budget surf films, many with sound tracks that reflected the mass media driven music culture. VHS and eventually DVDs made the surf film viewing experience an "at home" affair and the 'heyday' of joining your friends or taking a girl to "surf movie night" at the local high school soon quickly vanished. Furthermore, large surf brands began making surf films under their marketing budgets to promote clothing and product sales. Titles like Sonny Miller's, "The Search" for Rip Curl redefined the genre with exotic locales, big budgets and name surfers, such as Tom Curren.
In the late 1990s to the present, there has been a revival of the "independent surf film." Artists, like The Malloys, Jack Johnson and Jason Baffa have reinvented the genre by shooting self-financed 16mm motion picture film and utilizing indy music bands like G. Love, Alexi Murdoch, Mojave 3, White Buffalo and Donavon Frankenreiter, creating what the surf media has called, "modern classics." Some places still screen surfing films on the big screen.
Examples of surfing documentaries include:

  • Surf Board Riders, Waikiki short
  • Surf Crazy
  • Barefoot Adventure
  • Gone With the Wave
  • The Living Curl
  • The Endless Summer
  • The Fantastic Plastic Machine
  • The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun
  • Five Summer Stories
  • Morning of the Earth
  • Crystal Voyager
  • Tubular Swells
  • Storm Riders
  • Momentum
  • Endless Summer II
  • The Kill
  • Thicker than Water
  • September Sessions
  • '
  • Liquid Time
  • Surf Movie: reels 1-14
  • Blue Horizon
  • Step Into Liquid
  • Fair Bits
  • Glass Love

  • Riding Giants
  • Somewhere, Anywhere, Everywhere
  • '
  • The Seedling
  • AKA Girl Surfer
  • Billabong Odyssey
  • Going With The Flow: Classic California Soul Surfing
  • Sprout
  • A Broke Down Melody
  • Free As A Dog
  • Peel: The Peru Project - A Surf Odyssey
  • The Secret Machine
  • One California Day
  • Sipping Jetstreams
  • The Forgotten Coast
  • Bustin' Down the Door
  • New Emissions of Light and Sound
  • Live: A Music & Surfing Experience
  • Water man
  • Waveriders
  • Out of Place
  • The Present
  • Fiberglass and Megapixels
  • First Love
  • God Went Surfing With The Devil
  • White Wash
  • Year Zero
  • Drift
  • Strange Rumblings in Shangri-LA
  • View from a Blue Moon
  • Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable
  • Self Discovery for Social Survival

Beach Party films

The second type of surf movie would be the campy entertainment feature, also termed "beach party films" or "surfploitation flicks" by true surfers, having little to do with the authentic sport and culture of surfing and representing movies that attempted to cash in on the growing popularity of surfing among youth in the early 1960s. Examples of Beach Party films include:
Surfing is occasionally portrayed more realistically within fictional storylines, or use surfing as backdrop, or side theme.