Intentio

Intentio - A film by Loïc Wirth from ASSA Filmes on Vimeo.

Have you seen Intentio yet?  You really should, it will blow your hair back.

Released earlier on this year, it is the first feature length offering from insanely talented young Brazilian film maker Loic Wirth.  A wandering, poetic and visually striking piece of cinema, Wirth featured a slew of South American surfing talent alongside a fair smattering of some of the most exciting international big players who do airs and barrels these days.  Locations are ambiguous, a big feat to pull off these days in a world where many of us are bombarded with images of surf spots to the point of instant recognition, and one that highlights the surfing and the beauty of the backgrounds rather than ticking off a world tour check-list.

Mr Loic Wirth, image courtesy of Surfing Magazine.

It just so happens that Loic and I share a mutual friend (I lived and worked with one of his childhood friends in South Africa a few years ago), so I got in touch with him and fired a few questions his way.  His eloquent answers provide a really interesting insight into the creative process that led Loic to produce such a visually engaging and ethereal look at surfing in this day and age.  Check it:

- What route did you take to becoming a surf film-maker and producing Intentio?

There wasn't really a route.Things just happened by little life coincidences that put me in the same path of Pietro França, who was the first person to put a camera in my hands.  I had never filmed before, and never thought about it, I liked to edit for fun but had no clue why would I start filming.  But I fell in love with it.

- Intentio looks set to be the first critically acclaimed surf movie in a while to champion the surfers and waves of South America outside of the focus of the WQS and 'CT. Did you set out to wave the flag for your part of the world?

Not at all.  The persons on the film are the ones who I crossed paths and exchanged some ideas about the movie and believed in those ideas.  A lot of those guys are the reason this film came to life, they helped me going through a lot of the traveling and would always find a room on the floor for me to sleep.  But never for country reasons, it was all about the personalities.

- You've used a whole range of ambiguous locations in the movie and created something of a "fantasy" surf destination. What was the reasoning behind creating this mystique?

To achieve the goal I was aiming for visually, I decided to not really mind mixing locations or surfers.  I didn't want Intentio to be session based, location based or surfer based.  If anything, I guess I wanted it to be message based.  It's all the same world.

- There's a very strong aesthetic to Intentio. Do you feel that thoughtful foregrounds and backdrops or choice of colours in boards and clothing are lacking in a lot of recent surf imagery? Why is this? How and why did you choose not to conform?

Im not really sure how to answer that.  I guess there is a lot of everything out there nowadays.  From people giving focus to the backdrops, or clothing or other details.  I think as long as it is sincere, not for the others to approve, then the rest is a consequence.

- Did you set out with the intention of sharing a particular message with your film, or did you let Intentio develop organically?

There isn't really one message.  My goal was to share something positive.  To instigate whoever would like to be instigated, to question things.  Not to essentially act, but at least question, and let the act come naturally if needed.  The message is that there is no universal message, it's all so personal, it's all in ourselves, I just wanted to bring that out.

Intentio's UK premiere was at the London Surf Film Festival back in October.  Loic unfortunately couldn't make it, so I fired off a few shots to show him the packed room of his people who turned out to enjoy his movie.

The curtain goes up...

Golden Ticket (Thanks to Chris and Demi from LS/FF)

Chris Nelson introducing Intentio

Intentio premiered to a full theatre of hooting surfers on the festival's final night.

Go buy Intentio here, it's well worth it.

Volume Control

Surfboards are incredibly complicated works of craftsmanship, of that there is no doubt.  They're three dimensional shapes comprised of varying and complex parabolic curves which are meant to carry a human being across the face of a curved fluid surface and change direction on a whim.  They have to provide optimum hydrodynamic performance in a range of conditions.  We’re all different, our surfboards are all different, and the waves that we surf are all different, every single last one of them.

So why, when it comes to measuring the dimensions of these non-comformist sculptures, do we still revert to the incredibly basic dimensional equation of length x width x thickness?  Is there not more to it than that?

This week I had a piece published by The Inertia which examines the language of surfboard design and presents an argument for adding a fourth dimension onto the scribbled pencil statistics that straddle the stringer of our surfboards: volume.  The piece features incredibly insightful contributions on the topic from the coaches at the Surf Simply resort in Costa Rica and from Nick Blair of Joistik Surfboards in Sydney, Australia, for which I'm incredibly grateful.

If you've got even a passing interest in how your surfboard works and the thought processes and design principles that went into it, then hopefully you will find this article of some interest.  As far as I'm concerned, the more that we all know about our surfboards, the better.

Click here to check it out.  I hope that you like it.

Silver Dawn

Walking back up the beach - all limp, lifeless arms and tight shoulders hunched up around your ears from paddling for so many waves;  Salt-crusted eyelashes and eyebrows, and a slight sting when you blink;  Wide awake and yet exhausted at the same time;  Knowing that you've just had a whole day's worth of fun before everyone else's has even begun.  

Roll on lighter mornings and being able to sneak out for a meaningful surf before sinking a coffee and getting on with some work for the day.  

The sun's now starting to sneak a little bit further north each day in the Northern Hemisphere.  It won't be long now before dawn surfs are actually dawn surfs, and not just plain old surfing in the morning.  I for one can't wait.    

"Sunshine Sunday" Criteria

Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia.  By Chris Burkard for Surfer Magazine.

Today is "Sunshine Sunday" in the UK, the day when travel agents and tour operators prepare for around two million Brits to look for the light at the end of the wintery tunnel and book their summer holidays.  Maybe you're planning 2013's movements today also, and looking forward to the waves yet to come?
  
Trips, projects, expeditions, adventures - call them what you will (although if we're being picky, you can't plan adventures, they're what happens when a trip or expedition goes wrong), many of us populate our daydreams with these and while away the boredom of long, lonely drives or any other mind-numbing downtime planning and scheming.
This year I'm setting myself some criteria for the projects on my to-do list.  Each trip, if at all possible, has to fall into one of the following two categories:

• An ordinary trip done in an interesting way.
• An interesting trip done in an ordinary way.

It's that simple.  If it's a trip that's close to home or the sort of thing that's common fodder then I'm going to endeavour to do it in an interesting way, and if it's more of an expedition or exploratory trip then I'll probably have to undertake it by the (most likely stock-standard) ways and means available to me.   

These days, you'll be lucky to find something, anything, that somebody else hasn't done already - but that's no reason not to do it.

The six-wheeled truck used to explore the Kamchatka Peninsula.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Over the past few months I've taken a lot of inspiration from the trips that these images are taken from.  The January issues of Surfer magazine and Surf Europe feature a trip to the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia, a trip that was well documented through various social networking outlets by Chris Burkard and Foster Huntington who had portable solar panels with them to charge their cameras and laptops.   They scored good, fun, cold surf where nobody really expected it, exploring the region in a six-wheeled former Soviet military truck and a helicopter.  There's a great video available to view (it can't be embedded on this blog) through Surfer magazine, here.

Kamchatka campfire.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Around the same time as the Kamchatka trip, Californian pro-surfer Dan Malloy was cycling the length of California with two friends, carrying all of their camping and surfing gear in panniers and on bike trailers.  They travelled slowly, stopping off to surf, visit friends and work stints on organic farms along the coast.  It just so happens, as luck would have it, that Dan's two companions comprised a professional photographer and a videographer.  

Slow is Fast.  Photo by Dan Malloy.

Dan Malloy running out for a surf, the Slow is Fast bicycle trip, California.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Feeling inspired?  There are so many ways that you can go, do, and experience places and faces these days if you put your mind to it.  Maybe it'll be a staycation with a twist, a micro-adventure in your own backyard.  Or perhaps it'll be a trip which you spend more time researching, planning and preparing for than you actually spend doing it.  Either way, it'll make for a memorable one.  One that you can talk about over a drink in the pub when the days are short this time next year.  An experience that might just set the tone, or the wheels in motion, for the next.

Scott G Toepfer takes brilliant photographs of people having too much fun riding around on motorbikes.  Check out It's Better In The Wind.

Jump And The Net Will Come

New Years Eve eh?  I enjoy the opportunity that it provides to catch up with friends and make an occasion out of something, but actually I'm much more into New Years Day; starting off a fresh new lap of the sun by doing something fun.  I try to aim to start as I mean to go on, rather than rolling over the start line of January 1st feeling rotten.  

And resolutions...  why now, why midnight tonight?  Why not just decide to do something and get on with it, or making a change when you it occurs to you that you want or need to, rather than waiting for the same day as everybody else.  But resolutions are useful things.  Timely reminders to set the wheels in motion, or a good deadline to take a leap.  
Recently, I found myself juggling so many half-baked, hare-brained projects and silly ideas that I had to sit down and write SMART targets for all of them.  I really needed to prioritise them and set deadlines to give me even a half a chance of achieving just a couple of them, elsewise they'd all be left wallowing  on to-do lists covered in doodles and the brown circles of countless cups of tea.  I needed to check that each project was "Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound" to stop me from going off on tangents or focusing all of my energies on things that really aren't of very much use at all, whilst neglecting more important or achievable projects.  But perhaps the most important thing is just to get on and DO things, rather than just thinking about them (check out this great short picture-book by David Hieatt if you need a bit of help getting started doing).  And that is what New Years Eve is good for.  Tonight, you're standing with your toes curled over the edge.  When the clock strikes midnight, resolve yourself to achieve something this year then lean forward and push off.  In the words of my over-achieving friend Tom, "Jump and the net will come".

Have a great New Years, and a really happy and productive 2013.  I hope you've enjoyed another 52 weeks of gumpf and will stick with An Tor Orth An Mor for the next lap of the sun.  See you out there.  Mat

Image above:  25' down, 4' deep, by Mat Arney.
  

Catcha Fire

Fire.  To me it ranks alongside, if not above, the ocean in terms of acting as nature's very own television set.  I can stare into a fire for hours and that's not me being odd, that's something embedded in each and every one of us.  That's passed down from our cavemen ancestors.  It's in our DNA as human beings.
It's a couple of days after the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere so the days are starting to lengthen in their slow run-up to summer, even if it is barely perceptible.  But just because the worst of the darkness has passed, we're by no means out of the woods in terms of the cold.  As far as the cold goes, the worst is yet to come, and we'll still be lighting fires to keep warm for a few months yet.  But you don't stop lighting fires just because the sun comes out.  What do you think a barbecue is after all?  What do you gather around on summer evenings after a day on the beach?

In the words of the guys from the Best Made Company in the video featured below:

"The fire elicits a lot of different things, but the two things that come to mind are just conversation, and silence."

A fire can be the nucleus for storytelling, or the catalyst for quiet reflection, and often the same fire hosts both.  

Fancy a fire?  Here's a quick guide to generating some light and warmth, whether it be in the fireplace in your front room or out in the woods:

• Start small and get bigger.  You need small, easily flammable material to start your fire off, such as scrunched up newspaper, thin twigs or wood shavings.  This'll catch light easily but burn out fast, but you're just using it to set fire to the thicker, longer burning stuff.  This chain goes from tinder to kindling right through to big logs.
• Use seasoned logs at home (wood that's been left to "dry out" for at least a year) and dead wood in the outdoors, otherwise all of the energy goes into burning dampish wood and not into generating heat and light.  You'll just have a smokey, hissing and spitting fire that you have to lavish attention on for very little reward.
• Allow air to flow around the flame as you grow you fire.  Don't suffocate it, fire needs to breathe too.
• Lay your fire with tinder as it's base.  Kindling goes over the top of this, usually leant up around it in a teepee style, or cross hatched over the top.  Once the kindling has caught then you can add thicker split branches and logs in the same fashion, being careful not to collapse the structure.
• Keep your blaze small and hot, to develop a "heart" of glowing embers.
• If you want to cook over your fire then you're best off lashing three stout poles together into a tripod from which you can hang a pot.  Cook over your fire once it's died down to white-ish embers, just the same as with a barbecue.  Naked flame will just burn your food without cooking it through.
• If you need your fire, then tend it carefully and don't let it die out.  It's much easier to keep your fire fed and alive than it is to go through the whole process of lighting it again.
• Splitting logs and chopping kindling is way easier with a good, sharp, axe.  But mind your fingers won't you.
• Don't be an idiot with fire.  Keep a bit of healthy respect for nature.  If you're outside then try to build your fire where others have had campfires before, dig a shallow basin or surround your fire with rocks to avoid it spreading and don't build a fire if it's unnecessary or you're in an area at risk from wildfires.  

Rob awakening the embers still glowing from the previous night's fire.  I slept curled around this wood-burning stove trying to ward off the draught coming from their spare room nicknamed "Narnia" because of it's icy breeze.  This fire would be kept alive for days at a time, and keep the kettle permanently warm.

What the Tree Remembers, the Axe Forgets from Dark Rye on Vimeo.

Does this short webisode not just make you want to take a trip out to the woods for a few days?  It does me.

All images by Mat Arney.

Love/Hate

"Polzeath has to be the only wave in the world where going along it is actually worse than just going straight"

My housemate Benny and I were running down the beach out front of our house towards some distinctly ordinary looking waves when he hit me with this statement.  It's hard to disagree with him, but we still surf our local spot more often than either of us would care to admit, regardless.

Polzeath is a big old expanse of flat sand, fed by sediment flowing out of the mouth of the Camel estuary.  On Spring low tides it's just under half a mile from the top of the beach to the water's edge and the massive tidal range and constant flow of fine sand means that there are never really any discernible sand banks there.  At one point years ago a few of us hatched covert plans to hand out shovels to the young kids in the boardriders club to see if we could get them to dig a rip-bank and make good waves for at least one turn of the tide.  Waves seem to break sideways faster than they travel towards the shore and the wave faces are kind of fat and flat without much of a lip.  This embeds most local surfers with a front-foot heavy stance and an inclination towards running off down the line looking for a section to hit rather than going straight down and back up again.  A visiting Aussie friend of mine claimed that it was a bit like snowboarding, stating that you "just s-turn your way down the face until the thing stands up enough for you to tell whether or not it's a left or a right".
And it's usually busy.  Busy with other surfers, with tourists, swimmers and bodyboarders, legions of surf-schoolers and hordes of longboarders (and, now, more recently stand-up paddlers).  Easy access, a big beach, and nice soft waves.  In past summers the lifeguards used to split the beach in two by anchoring a buoy-line out past the mean low tide line.  When waves rolled through the buoys used to lift the seaweedy green rope up out of the water like a trip wire, either catching people out or forcing a rapid cutback and kick-out from the more-aware.
But we all love our local.  Almost as much as we love to moan about it.  Sure, surfing at home usually makes for a bit of "upwards readjustment" any time you go on a surf trip, but it also makes for good paddlers.  You can't consistently surf the spot with one of the longest paddle outs in Europe and not develop a bit of shoulder stamina.  And almost every other surf spot is a pleasant change when we go up the hill and leave the village.  It makes for happy travellers, even if it's just round the corner to the next beach.

Hating your local surf spot?  You've gotta love it, one way or another.

Image:  Benny - out of season, loving hating on his local, and tearing into it just for good measure.  By Mat Arney.