Rooms
The rooms these films actually play in
Four rooms, twenty-six pieces. Everything the site holds is listed here, and every piece is also reachable from its own room.
The Circuit
Six cities, and a 1928 cinema in Encinitas
The festival circuit — San Diego, Byron Bay, New York, London, Hawaii, Anglet — and the La Paloma Theatre as the genre's most storied room.
- La Paloma, 1928: The Room Surf Cinema Came Home To
- What the San Diego Festival Has Actually Shown
- Byron Bay: Where the Circuit Goes Australian
- London's Surf Film Festival and the Crowd That Fills It
- New York, September, and the East Coast's Film Week
- Anglet and Hawaii: The Ends of the Circuit
- When a Brand Funds the Whole Film
- After the Festival: How Surf Films Actually Get Distributed
The Films
The films, in the order they changed things
From Bruce Brown's self-distributed print to streaming features — the titles that bent the genre and the conditions that made them possible.
- Bruce Brown Sold Tickets from the Back of a Van
- Morning of the Earth and the Turn Toward Something Quieter
- Momentum, 1992: The Year the Genre Went to Video
- Girls Can't Surf and the Tour It Reconstructed
- Kissed by God: What the Documentary Chose to Show
- Riding Giants and the Question of What Big-Wave History Looks Like
- Thomas Campbell Shot on Film When Everyone Else Had Stopped
- Blue Crush, Bustin' Down the Door and the Twenty-Year Wait for the Women's Story
The Camera
A camera in a box, and a swim to the right place
Water housings, high-speed rigs, drones and the physical demands of getting a camera into position — the equipment decisions that defined what surf cinema could show.
- The Box Costs More Than the Camera Inside It
- The Swim Is the Equipment
- Chris Bryan and What Happens at 1,500 Frames Per Second
- Jack McCoy Shot from a Ski Before Anyone Called It Coverage
- Part 107, August 2016: When the FAA Wrote Drone Rules for Everyone
- GoPro Started as a Wrist Camera for Surfers, Then Changed What a Surf Film Could Be
The Scene
The scene the circuit keeps coming back to
Encinitas, Cardiff Reef, Swami's, Windansea and the San Diego shaping trade — the coastal geography the films keep returning to, and the environmental fights that shaped it.