Playing at Bird's Surf Shed on May 11-13, the inaugural San Diego Surf Film Festival is coming. Screening 15 feature-length films and 30 short films from the United States and overseas, not only is the surfing going to be great, but with the films playing amongst Eric "Bird" Huffman's collection of more than 400 historic surfboards, there will be no shortage of nostalgia.
"We were all born and raised in San Diego and wanted to share and celebrate everything we love about our beautiful hometown," says Pierce Michael Kavanagh who founded the event along with Petra Kavanagh and Ed Lewis." In addition, the San Diego surfing community has had a major influence on the history and development of surfing through its unique surfboard designers and incredible surfers. We knew that Bird's Surf Shed was the only venue we wanted to use. Bird's vision and venue are perfectly aligned with the SDSFF."
"Bird's Surf Shed is honored and stoked to host the inaugural surf film festival," says Bird. "San Diego has always been a hot bed for surfing, surfers and board builders and that's a pretty well known fact. San Diego has also always supplied the surfing world with great photographers and film makers as well. I can think of no better place in all of Southern California for such an important and prestigious event to take place other than San Diego. All three days will offer up a variety of subject matters along with some special daily events too. It will sell out so advanced ticket purchases are suggested as seating will be limited."
Lewis reflects, "To expand a bit, a lot of our friends are independent surf filmmakers and we started to notice that it was becoming harder and harder to make surf films as an independent art form. There is so much free content online that it is hard to compete when you are selling your work. Just to make a film takes a significant amount of effort, time and money. The motivation of the film festival is to help support the independent filmmaker, give them promotional opportunities, help place them into distribution deals and get the public behind them."
The San Diego Surf Festival is taking submissions from independent filmmakers until March 31. For more details, go to www.sandiegosurffilmfestival.com.