Surf films you can watch free

Seventy surf films, every one checked to confirm it still plays. Full films only, nothing under twenty minutes, no trailers and no clips. Where a film exists only as a standard definition transfer we say so, because for a lot of these there is no better copy in existence.

70 full films, every one checked to confirm it still plays.

  • 42 min

    5'5" x 19 1/4"

    1997Lost

    Cory Lopez, Shea Lopez, Andy Irons, Bruce Irons, Chris Ward, Tom Curren

    About this film
    Named after a board rather than a person, which tells you what it is about. In 1996 Chris Ward rang Matt Biolos from Hawaii asking for a fish, and the film that came out of that is the one credited with putting short, wide boards back into serious surfing.

    The cast is why it worked. Cory and Shea Lopez, both Irons brothers, Ward, and Tom Curren, all riding equipment that the performance orthodoxy of the time considered a novelty. Once those names rode them, the argument was over.

    If you want to know why half the boards in a modern shop are wider and shorter than they were in 1995, the answer starts here. Lost revisited the idea with Redux in 2009.

    SD transfer, best available.

  • 89 min

    A Deeper Shade of Blue

    2011HD

    Directed by Jack McCoy

    About this film
    Jack McCoy made around twenty five surf films across his career and this is the one he built for people who do not surf. He and Derek Hynd spent roughly eighteen months researching the history first, then McCoy spent about five years shooting and cutting it, which is an absurd investment for a surf film and explains why it does not look like one.

    It traces the sport from its Hawaiian origins through the boards and the culture that followed. Major surf companies largely declined to fund it and it still reached more than four hundred American cinemas.

    Reception has always been split. Some find it the definitive surf documentary and others find it slow. Watch it for the history rather than the surfing.

    Uploaded by Indie Rights, a distributor, rather than a third party. One of the more durable pointers in this archive.

  • 37 min

    All Tha Way Live

    HD

    Directed by Justin Purser

    CJ Hobgood, Damien Hobgood, Kelly Slater, Taj Burrow

    About this film
    Justin Purser directed, and CJ and Damien Hobgood host it, which places it squarely in the era when a surf video could have presenters and nobody found that odd. Kelly Slater and Taj Burrow are among the surfers.

    The Hobgood twins are the interesting part. Identical twins who both made the World Tour, with CJ taking the 2001 world title, and the only pair in surfing history to manage it. Putting them in front of camera rather than only in the water was a sensible instinct.

    At 1440p this is one of the better-looking transfers of an older film in the archive, which is unusual for the period.
  • 22 min

    Anything Sing

    Reef

    About this film
    A Reef film, and the least documented entry in this archive after Hawaii Nine Four. No database, magazine archive or catalogue carries it, and the only credit available comes from a YouTube upload rather than a source.

    What is there is twenty two minutes of Reef team surfing, cut in the register of the early 2010s. If the credit on the upload is right it was made by one of the better filmmakers working at the time, which would explain why it looks more considered than a team video needs to.

    Listed here for the footage. Its provenance is open and we would rather say so than invent it.
  • 31 min

    California Soul

    2020NobodySurfHD

    Directed by Tatsuo Takei

    About this film
    Tatsuo Takei shoots surfing on film, mostly 16mm, and has done for two decades. California Soul came out in August 2020 as the last of NobodySurf's originals series, with footage gathered between 2018 and 2020.

    It is the most purely visual thing in this archive. There is no narrative, no cast of names being showcased and no performance argument being made. It is California, shot by someone who approaches a surf film the way a photographer approaches a body of work.

    Thirty one minutes, and the one to put on if you want surfing on in the room rather than surfing to watch closely.
  • 31 min

    Chocolate Barrels & Liquid Trips

    1999Rip Curl

    Mick Fanning, Nathan Hedge, Frankie Oberholzer, Pancho Sullivan, Zane Harrison, Darren O'Rafferty

    About this film
    Rip Curl built its identity around The Search, the idea that the point of surfing is going to find waves rather than competing in them, and this 1999 film is that idea at full strength: a year spent working the Pacific, Southern and Indian Oceans.

    Mick Fanning is in it before anyone outside Australia knew the name, which is the main reason to watch now. Frankie Oberholzer and Pancho Sullivan were both better known at the time.

    It sits alongside The Ritual from the same year as a pair of 1999 brand films with completely different budgets and the same instinct: film the kids, go somewhere good, do not explain.

    SD transfer, best available.

  • 46 min

    Creepy Fingers

    2006Volcom

    Directed by R.T. Thomas

    Bruce Irons, Ozzie Wright, Dean Morrison

    About this film
    Eight years after Magna Plasm, Volcom was still making surf films that looked like nobody else's, and Creepy Fingers is the mid-2000s version of that instinct: better equipped, no more respectable.

    Ozzie Wright is the reason to watch. He surfed in a register that had no real precedent and spawned a hundred imitators who all missed the point, and this is him near his peak. Bruce Irons appears for the third Volcom film in this archive, which tells you something about where his loyalties were. Dean Morrison rounds it out.

    R.T. Thomas directed, and the Veeco-published DVD is where the credit is clearest. Of the Volcom films here it is the most watchable on a first pass, if the late nineties ones feel too raw to start with.

    SD transfer, best available.

  • 27 min

    Dark Hollow

    2021GlobeHD

    Dion Agius

    About this film
    Dion Agius spent years on this and it shows. Dark Hollow is built around Tasmania, both as a place to surf and as a thing worth protecting, and it is dedicated to the future of the Tasmanian wilderness. A surf film with an actual position is rare enough to be worth noting.

    The surfing is slabs and technical aerial work cut to hard techno, which sounds like a bad idea and is not. At twenty seven minutes it is the most tightly made short film in this archive.

    It is also the better of the two Globe films here, the other being their 2004 debut Somewhere, Anywhere, Everywhere. Seventeen years of practice went somewhere.
  • 24 min

    Done

    2012HD

    Directed by Blake Vincent Kueny, John John Florence

    John John Florence, Nathan Florence, Ivan Florence, Albee Layer, Kiron Jabour, Matt Meola

    About this film
    John John Florence before the world titles, filmed by Blake Vincent Kueny, who shot and cut it as well as directing. Florence takes a co-director credit, which was unusual then and became the template for how he has handled his films since.

    Twenty four minutes, shot across Hawaii, Tahiti, Africa and Australia, with both his brothers in it alongside Albee Layer, Kiron Jabour and Matt Meola. It won Movie of the Year at the 2013 Surfer Poll.

    It holds up because it was made before anyone needed it to carry a narrative about him. He was a teenager who surfed better than everyone, the film says so, and it stops at twenty four minutes.
  • 23 min

    Fifty Years of Surfing on Film: the John Severson segment

    2008The Surfer's Journal

    Directed by Ira Opper

    About this film
    Not a Severson film, despite the title. This is one chapter of The Surfer's Journal's 2008 compilation Fifty Years of Surfing on Film, directed and produced by Ira Opper and written by Matt Warshaw, in which Severson is one of several filmmakers profiled alongside Bud Browne and Greg Noll.

    Worth watching anyway, because Severson matters more than any other single figure here. He founded Surfer magazine, and his own films run from Surf Safari in 1959 through to Pacific Vibrations in 1970, which is the one to seek out.

    Twenty three minutes, and the best short introduction in this archive to where surf filmmaking actually came from before any of the brand videos existed.

    A segment from the compilation Fifty Years of Surfing on Film Vol 1, not a standalone film and not a film by Severson.

  • 50 min

    Filthy Habits

    1988Billabong

    Mark Occhilupo, Sunny Garcia, Richie Collins, Ronnie Burns, Matt Branson

    About this film
    The oldest thing in this archive and arguably the most consequential. Billabong put out Filthy Habits in 1988 and invented the format every surf video spent the next twenty years copying: hard surfing cut tight to loud music, no narration, no story.

    Before this, surf films were travelogues with voiceover. After it, they were this. The soundtrack is the reason, drawing on TSOL, Social Distortion, The Vandals and Dream Syndicate among others, and pairing punk with surfing was genuinely new.

    Occy is the headline act, surfing at nineteen or twenty with the power that made his reputation. Sunny Garcia, Richie Collins and Ronnie Burns fill it out. Watch it and then watch Magna Plasm from ten years later to see what it started.

    SD transfer, best available. This is a 1988 video and no better master is in circulation.

  • 74 min

    Frame Lines

    2002Billabong

    Directed by Bali Strickland

    Joel Parkinson, Mark Occhilupo, Andy Irons, Shane Dorian, Mick Fanning, CJ Hobgood, Cory Lopez

    About this film
    Bali Strickland made his name with Evolv and then went to Billabong, and Frame Lines was the first of that run. It arrived in 2002 with a cast that only Billabong could assemble at the time: Joel Parkinson and Mick Fanning early, Occy late, Andy Irons and Shane Dorian in between.

    What got noticed on release was the editing. Strickland cut it differently from the house style of the period and reviewers singled that out, which is rare for a brand video.

    It pairs well with The Blueprint from the same year and the same sponsor. Two films, one roster, two filmmakers with different ideas about what to do with it.

    SD transfer. The upload runs 74 minutes against a documented release of 43 to 45, so it may be a double bill or an extended compilation rather than the original cut.

  • 37 min

    Frankenplasm

    Volcom

    Bruce Irons, Shawn Barron, Gavin Beschen

    About this film
    The follow-up to Magna Plasm, with much the same cast and the same refusal to look professional. Volcom had found something that worked and went back for it immediately, and Frankenplasm is the sound of a company realising its surf films were going to matter more than its advertising.

    It is the lesser of the two, which is not much of a criticism given what it is standing next to. Bruce Irons again, Shawn Barron again, shot and cut with the same deliberate crudeness.

    Worth watching straight after Magna Plasm to see how quickly the house style set. By the second film the Volcom look was already fixed, and it stayed fixed for the next decade.

    SD transfer, best available.

  • 34 min

    Get-N Classic Vol. 1

    2011Vans

    Directed by Graham Nash, Reagan Ritchie

    Joel Tudor, Nathan Fletcher, Dane Gudauskas, Patrick Gudauskas, Tanner Gudauskas

    About this film
    The first of Vans' three Get-N Classic films, following the surf team's travels through 2011. Graham Nash and Reagan Ritchie directed, the same pair behind The Ductumentary elsewhere in this archive.

    Vans' roster was always the odd one out among the big brands, built on longboarders and alternative-craft riders rather than tour contenders. Joel Tudor and Nathan Fletcher in the same film as the three Gudauskas brothers is a lineup no other sponsor would have assembled.

    Thirty four minutes. The series runs 2011, 2012 and 2014, and the archive holds all three, which makes it the only complete multi-film run here apart from Snapt.
  • 32 min

    Get-N Classic Vol. 2

    2012Vans

    Directed by Graham Nash, Reagan Ritchie, Jared Abe, Steve Zeitzoff

    About this film
    The middle volume, covering the Vans team's year of travel through 2012. Nash and Ritchie again, with Jared Abe and Steve Zeitzoff added to the directing credit on this one.

    Annual team films were the standard brand output of the period and most of them have aged into interchangeability. The Get-N films hold up slightly better because the Vans roster was genuinely unusual, so the surfing varies from section to section rather than repeating one style at different reefs.

    Thirty two minutes, and the shortest of the three.
  • 48 min

    Get-N Classic Vol. 3

    2014VansHD

    Directed by Graham Nash, Reagan Ritchie

    About this film
    The last and longest of the three, premiered on tour during the 2014 Vans US Open and put online free that September. Forty eight minutes drawn from Hawaii, California, Scotland, Peru, Australia, Mexico, Indonesia and the Caribbean.

    Scotland is the detail worth noting. Almost nothing in this archive goes anywhere cold except the needessentials films, and a major brand sending its team to the North Sea in 2014 was a reasonable signal that the Indonesia-and-Hawaii default was wearing thin.

    The best entry point to the series if you only watch one. Vans released it free deliberately, which makes it among the safer pointers here.
  • 43 min

    Glad You Scored

    2022Chapter 11 TV, VansHD

    Directed by Hunter Martinez

    Bobby Martinez, Dylan Graves, Holly Wawn, Wade Goodall

    About this film
    A surf film about the business of making a surf film, which sounds insufferable and is not. Dane Reynolds wanted to keep the parts that normally get cut, the failed trips and the waiting and the misadventure, and Hunter Martinez directed it with Reynolds among the editors.

    The cast is unusually broad for a Chapter 11 release. Bobby Martinez turns up, almost two decades after Mixed Tape elsewhere in this archive. Dylan Graves, Holly Wawn and Wade Goodall are in it too.

    Forty three minutes, and the most self aware thing here by a distance. Watch it after a few of the 1990s brand videos to see how completely the form changed.
  • 22 min

    Gone With The Wave II, Part 1

    Directed by Mike Clancy

    About this film
    A Mike Clancy longboard film split across several parts, of which the archive holds only the first. It moves between Santa Cruz and Costa Rica, which is a more modest itinerary than most travel films here and probably a more honest one.

    Traditional longboarding is well represented in this archive by Log Rap, The Ductumentary and the Jack Coleman films, and this is the oldest and roughest of that group. Worth it if you have worked through the others.

    One caution on the name: this is not Gone with the Wave from 1964, Phil Wilson's California, Mexico and Hawaii documentary. Different film, different era, numeral aside.

    Part 1 only. This is the first part of a multi-part film and the remaining parts are not in the archive, though a YouTube playlist carries them.

  • 61 min

    Hawaii Nine Four

    HD

    About this film
    An hour of Hawaiian and Australian surf footage from the mid nineties, and one of the least documented things in this archive. No catalogue, database or magazine archive carries it under this name.

    What is on screen is straightforward: big Hawaiian waves and Australian beachbreaks, shot and cut in the style of the period, with none of the structure that the brand films of the same era were starting to attempt.

    It is here because the footage is worth an hour, not because its provenance is settled. If you recognise it, we would genuinely like to know what it is.
  • 37 min

    I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night

    2014Deus ex Machina

    Directed by Dustin Humphrey

    Harrison Roach, Matt Cuddihy, Zye Norris, Bryce Young

    About this film
    Deus ex Machina built a whole aesthetic in Bali around motorcycles, single fins and a refusal to acknowledge the shortboard, and this is the film that made the case for it. Dustin Humphrey directed, with RAEN and Modern Story Pictures alongside Deus.

    Harrison Roach is the surfer to watch, riding logs in Indonesian pointbreaks with a patience that makes the performance films elsewhere in this archive look hurried. Matt Cuddihy, Zye Norris and Bryce Young are with him.

    It sits naturally beside Moonrockers and the Vans longboard material. Three films, three different answers to the same question about what surfing is for once you stop scoring it.
  • 25 min

    Kelly Slater & The Young Guns

    2004QuiksilverHD

    Kelly Slater, Dane Reynolds, Jeremy Flores, Ry Craike, Masatoshi Ohno, Luke Munro

    About this film
    Quiksilver put five teenagers on a boat in Indonesia with Kelly Slater and filmed what happened. That is the whole premise, and in 2004 it was a genuinely strange thing for a brand to fund: no contest, no narrative, just ten days aboard the Komodo and a 34 year old world champion acting as chaperone to kids who mostly had not been on a plane that long before.

    It works because of who those kids turned out to be. Dane Reynolds and Jeremy Flores are in here before either had a career, surfing without the weight of expectation that arrived later. The film is short and has no interest in explaining itself, which is probably why it aged better than most brand-funded surf travel of the period.

    The print on YouTube is a 4K transfer and looks far better than a 2004 brand video has any right to.
  • 24 min

    Leave a Message

    2011Nike 6.0

    Directed by Jason Kenworthy

    Carissa Moore, Lakey Peterson, Laura Enever, Coco Ho, Monyca Byrne-Wickey, Malia Manuel

    About this film
    An all-women surf film with a real budget behind it, which in 2011 was close to unprecedented. Nike 6.0 put Carissa Moore, Lakey Peterson, Laura Enever, Coco Ho, Monyca Byrne-Wickey and Malia Manuel in one film and shot it to the standard of the men's releases of the period.

    Moore was eighteen and a year from her first world title. Peterson and Enever were at a similar point. Taken together the cast is most of the following decade of women's competitive surfing, filmed before any of it happened.

    There is a postscript. Nike discontinued the 6.0 line shortly after this came out, so a film made to launch a brand ended up outliving it.
  • 23 min

    Loaded

    2014Marine Layer Productions

    Dane Reynolds, Craig Anderson, Noa Deane, Taylor Knox, Nat Young, Andrew Doheny

    About this film
    This started as a record of the tour promoting Slow Dance and turned into its own film, which tells you most of what you need to know about how Marine Layer operated. Dane Reynolds ran it as his own outfit and made things at the pace he wanted.

    Twenty three minutes, with Craig Anderson and Noa Deane alongside Reynolds, plus Taylor Knox from the previous generation and Nat Young and Andrew Doheny from the next. The cast is the point: this is the Ventura scene documenting itself rather than a sponsor assembling a roster.

    Reynolds later moved to directing other people, which produced Skinny Meat Head elsewhere in this archive. This is him still in front of the camera.
  • 22 min

    Log Rap: The Movie

    2019Log RapHD

    Directed by Ryan Cannon

    Kaimana Takayama, Kaniela Stewart, Blake Michaels

    About this film
    Ryan Cannon started Log Rap in 2016 on a single idea: cut single fin longboarding to hip hop rather than to the surf rock and indie that the genre had defaulted to for decades. The name says it. This is the first full film built that way.

    It works better than it sounds, partly because the surfing is genuinely good. Kaimana Takayama and Kaniela Stewart are among the best traditional longboarders of their generation, and the film puts them in small California waves rather than reaching for anything dramatic.

    Twenty two minutes in 4K, and the newest thinking in the archive about what to do with a longboard. Watch it after The Ductumentary for the two ends of that argument.
  • 44 min

    Lost Track Atlantic, Episode 1

    2021needessentialsHD

    Directed by Ishka Folkwell

    Torren Martyn

    About this film
    The opening leg of the four part series that followed Lost Track New Zealand, filmed in late 2019 and released in 2021 after the world had rearranged itself in between. The timing is part of why it landed the way it did: a long, slow film about travelling freely, arriving at a moment when nobody could.

    Martyn and Folkwell work the Atlantic coast on the same principle as the New Zealand film, which is that the journey is the structure and the surfing happens when it happens. At forty four minutes this is the longest episode and the one that sets up everything after it.

    Start here rather than dropping into a later episode. The series rewards being watched in order.

    Episode 1 of a four part series. The archive holds episodes 1, 2 and 4.

  • 33 min

    Lost Track Atlantic, Episode 2

    2021needessentialsHD

    Directed by Ishka Folkwell

    Torren Martyn

    About this film
    The second leg, and the point where the series settles into its rhythm. By now the premise needs no restating and Folkwell can simply let the trip unfold, which is when this kind of filmmaking either works or becomes tedious. It works.

    Martyn is on equipment most people would not choose for the waves he puts it in, and the fact that it never reads as a stunt is the whole appeal. The surfing is unhurried in a way that makes performance surfing look slightly frantic by comparison.

    Shorter than episode 1 by ten minutes and tighter for it.

    Episode 2 of a four part series. The archive holds episodes 1, 2 and 4.

  • 31 min

    Lost Track Atlantic, Episode 4

    2021needessentialsHD

    Directed by Ishka Folkwell

    Torren Martyn

    About this film
    The closing episode. If you have watched the three before it, this is where the trip and the series land, and Folkwell gives it the ending the format earned rather than a montage.

    It is worth saying plainly that the Lost Track films are the best-looking things in this archive. Shot in 4K by a filmmaker who treats a cold grey coastline as seriously as a tropical reef, they are also the clearest answer to anyone who thinks the surf film died when clips took over.

    A note on sequence: we are missing episode 3, so the jump from 2 to 4 is ours, not the series'.

    Episode 4 of a four part series, and its conclusion. The archive is missing episode 3, which exists and can be added.

  • 61 min

    Lost Track New Zealand

    2020needessentialsHD

    Directed by Ishka Folkwell

    Torren Martyn

    About this film
    Torren Martyn and filmmaker Ishka Folkwell customised two Royal Enfield motorcycles to carry surfboards, then spent three months riding New Zealand looking for waves. That is the film. No contest, no sponsor obligations visible on screen, no narrative beyond the road.

    Martyn surfs twin fins and mid-lengths in a style that has become extremely influential and is almost impossible to copy, because the whole point of it is that nothing looks forced. Watching an hour of it in 4K is the closest the archive gets to a mood piece that still has real surfing in it.

    Folkwell shoots landscape as carefully as he shoots the surfing, which is what separates the needessentials films from brand travel content that superficially resembles them.
  • 39 min

    Magna Plasm

    1998Volcom

    Bruce Irons, Shawn Barron, Gavin Beschen, Tai Vandyke, Dave Post

    About this film
    This is the film that decided what Volcom was going to be. Before Magna Plasm the company was a clothing brand that sponsored surfers; after it, Volcom was a film company that also sold clothes, and the surf video stopped being a highlight reel and started being allowed to be weird.

    Bruce Irons is the draw. Shawn Barron, Gavin Beschen and Tai Vandyke fill it out, and the whole thing is built on an aesthetic that reads as deliberately unpolished in a way that was genuinely new in 1998.

    It looks rough because it is a VHS transfer and no master is in circulation. That is the correct way to watch it. A cleaned-up Magna Plasm would be a worse Magna Plasm.

    VHS-sourced SD transfer, best available. A 1080p upload exists but runs only 8 minutes, so it is an excerpt rather than the film.

  • 26 min

    Making Waves: A Louisiana Surfing Documentary

    2020HD

    Directed by Nicholas Dorsey

    About this film
    Louisiana has a surf club. One. The Pontcha Surf Club rides what the Gulf provides, which is not much and not often, and Nicholas Dorsey made a documentary about the people who do it anyway.

    It is the odd one out in this archive and the most interesting for it. Every other film here goes somewhere with good waves. This one stays put in a place with bad ones and asks why anybody bothers, which turns out to be a better question than where the best barrel is.

    Twenty six minutes. If you surf somewhere unglamorous, this is the film on this page that is actually about you.
  • 51 min

    Mixed Tape

    2007Reef

    Bobby Martinez

    About this film
    Reef built this around Bobby Martinez in 2007, covering his rookie World Tour season the year before. Martinez was from Santa Barbara, surfed with a backhand that people still bring up, and had a relationship with professional surfing that ended more abruptly than anyone expected a few years after this.

    That gives the film a retrospective weight it did not have at the time. It is a sponsor's portrait of a rookie, made when the assumption was that a long career followed.

    There is also a Reef Team section, which is the part that dates it hardest. The team video was still a format in 2007.

    SD transfer, best available.

  • 24 min

    Moments

    2011QuiksilverHD

    Directed by Jamie Tierny

    Dane Reynolds, Craig Anderson, Jeremy Flores, Clay Marzo, Kelly Slater

    About this film
    Quiksilver's 2011 team film, released free at a point when that was still a statement rather than the default. The cast is the main event: Dane Reynolds and Craig Anderson at their most watched, Clay Marzo and Jeremy Flores several years on from the Young Guns films, and Slater still competing at the top.

    Twenty four minutes, and more coherent than a team video usually manages, probably because the roster was small enough to give everyone real screen time.

    It makes a useful bookend with the three Young Guns films elsewhere here. Same company, same decade, and you can watch the teenagers from 2004 turn into the headliners.
  • 45 min

    Montaj

    2002BillabongHD

    Taj Burrow

    About this film
    Taj Burrow spent his career being the most technically gifted surfer never to win a world title, and Montaj is the film that made the case he did not need one. Billabong built it around him in 2002, at the point where his air game was years ahead of the judging criteria that would eventually catch up.

    The surfing is the whole film. There is no story being told and no attempt at one, just Burrow doing things that in 2002 read as faintly implausible.

    A note on the name, because it causes confusion: Montaj is not Sabotaj, and it is not Blue Horizon. Those are Jack McCoy films featuring Burrow. This is a different and earlier thing, and no director credit for it has survived into any source I can find.
  • 23 min

    Moonrockers

    2014RAEN

    Directed by Jack Coleman

    Alex Knost, Ford Archbold, Warren Smith, Kassia Meador, Ellis Ericson, Thom Pringle

    About this film
    Jack Coleman shoots on film and edits like someone who does not care whether you can identify the manoeuvre, which puts his work at the opposite end of the archive from the brand videos. Moonrockers is the RAEN-presented one, and it is the easiest of his films to recommend.

    Alex Knost and Kassia Meador are the names most people will know, both riding logs and single fins in a register that treats the shortboard era as optional. Ford Archbold, Warren Smith, Ellis Ericson and Thom Pringle fill it out.

    Twenty three minutes, more interested in light and texture than performance. If the late nineties material here feels relentless, this is the antidote.
  • 46 min

    Motel Hell

    2024HD

    Directed by Dave Fox

    Harry Bryant, Dion Agius, Shaun Manners, Wade Goodall, Craig Anderson, Tom Lowe

    About this film
    Three years of footage cut into forty six minutes, directed by Dave Fox and co-produced by Harry Bryant, who is also its subject. It took Best Surf Film in Stab's 2024 readers' poll.

    Bryant is the most entertaining person in surfing and the film does not try to civilise him. It moves between Indonesia and Ireland, with Dion Agius, Shaun Manners, Wade Goodall, Craig Anderson and Tom Lowe appearing across it, and it is held together by Bryant's own commentary rather than by structure.

    The archive also holds all three Postcards companion pieces, assembled from what did not fit here. Watch this first. The Postcards are better once you know what they were cut from.

    Uploaded by Harry Bryant, who co-produced the film. A rights-holder upload, and among the most durable pointers in this archive.

  • 53 min

    No Thrills for the Cautious

    1991Rusty

    Pat O'Connell, Shane Beschen, Matt Branson, Todd Chesser, Mike Parsons, Rob Bain

    About this film
    Rusty's contribution to the format Billabong had started three years earlier, and a good one. Released in 1991 with a Smashing Pumpkins-assisted soundtrack and a cast that reads like a census of early nineties surfing: Pat O'Connell before Endless Summer II made him famous, Shane Beschen, Matt Branson, Mike Parsons, Rob Bain.

    Todd Chesser is in it, which gives the film a weight it did not have at the time. He died at Outside Alligator Rock in 1997 and footage of him is limited.

    The brand's own archive dates it 1991, which is better evidence than the late-eighties date some uploads claim. A board company video, but a board company that had the best surfers of the period on its team.

    SD transfer, best available.

  • 26 min

    #NoFilter

    2012

    Directed by Ryan Marcus, Ryan Moss

    Ian Walsh, Damien Hobgood, Bede Durbidge

    About this film
    A Fox team film from 2012, directed by Ryan Marcus and Ryan Moss, built around Ian Walsh, Damien Hobgood and Bede Durbidge. Fox came to surfing from motocross and never quite shed that, which gives its films a different tone from the native surf brands.

    Walsh is the reason to watch. He is a big wave specialist rather than a performance surfer, and putting him alongside two competitive tour surfers produces a contrast the film does not force.

    Twenty six minutes. A hashtag in a film title dates it precisely to 2012 and nothing else about it does, which is the best argument here against naming anything after a platform convention.
  • 32 min

    Nordurland

    needessentialsHD

    Directed by Ishka Folkwell

    Torren Martyn, Laurie Towner, Ryan Scanlon

    About this film
    Martyn, Laurie Towner and needessentials founder Ryan Scanlon go north into the Arctic, which in practice means surfing in snow and spending most of the film cold. Folkwell shoots it with the same restraint as the Lost Track films and the landscape does a lot of the work.

    Towner is the interesting inclusion. He built a reputation on heavy water rather than style, so pairing him with Martyn produces a contrast the film does not bother to comment on but which is visible in every exchange.

    Shorter and bleaker than the Lost Track films, and a good entry point if an hour of motorbikes sounds like a lot.
  • 44 min

    On It: The Art of Scoring

    2019SurflineHD

    Directed by Nathan Myers

    Koa Rothman, Brett Barley, Albee Layer, Nic Von Rupp

    About this film
    Surfline's first film as a production house rather than a forecasting service, premiered in April 2019. The premise is built out of what Surfline actually does: a year of chasing swells that the forecast called, assembled into one film.

    Koa Rothman, Brett Barley, Albee Layer and Nic Von Rupp are the surfers, with Zak Noyle shooting the heavy water. All four built audiences through regular online output rather than contest results, which makes this a reasonable snapshot of where surf media had landed by 2019.

    At forty four minutes it is longer than it needs to be, and it is the clearest example here of a film assembled from footage that already existed rather than shot as a film.
  • 73 min

    On the Road with Spike

    LostHD

    About this film
    One of the Lost videos from the run that made the company's name, and at seventy three minutes the second longest thing in this archive.

    It has a genuinely good story attached to it. While the film was being edited, Bradley Nowell gave the Lost crew a pre-release copy of Sublime's self titled album, and they used a track from it twice. Nowell died in May 1996, before that record turned Sublime into a household name, which places the film at a very specific moment and makes its soundtrack an accident of timing nobody could repeat.

    It belongs with What's Really Goin' On and 5'5" x 19 1/4" as the three Lost videos here. Together they are the clearest surviving record of what that company was doing in the nineties.
  • 61 min

    Please Have Fun

    2019HD

    Directed by Kevin Jansen

    Grant Noble, Nick Melanson, Troy Elmore, Bryce Suba

    About this film
    Kevin Jansen's first full length film as director, premiered in spring 2019 to a sold out La Paloma Theater in Encinitas. At sixty one minutes it is one of the longest things here and it earns the length.

    The surfing is twin fins, fish and logs rather than performance shortboarding, and the cast are names most people will not know: Grant Noble, Nick Melanson, Troy Elmore, Bryce Suba. That is the appeal. Nobody in it is building a competitive record, so the film has no scoreboard to serve.

    It sits with Moonrockers and I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night as the third of the alternative-craft films in the archive, and it is the most generous of the three with screen time.
  • 35 min

    Postcards from Motel Hell, Part 1

    HD

    Harry Bryant

    About this film
    Not the film. Harry Bryant made a feature called Motel Hell with director Dave Fox, and Postcards is the material that did not fit: thirty five minutes of offcuts, pub stories and footage too loose for the cut.

    It is better than that description makes it sound. Bryant is one of the few genuinely funny people in surfing and the format suits him, because nothing here has to justify its presence. Watching the discards from a good surf film is often more revealing than watching the film.

    If you want the actual feature, it is not in this archive. Worth knowing before you start.

    Companion piece to the feature film Motel Hell (dir. Dave Fox), not the feature itself. Built from unused footage and stories from the trip.

  • 46 min

    Postcards from Motel Hell, Part 2

    HD

    Harry Bryant, Dion Agius, Shaun Manners, Rolo Montes

    About this film
    The strongest of the three Postcards, and at forty six minutes the longest. It is essentially one extended Indonesian rip bowl session with Bryant, Dion Agius, Shaun Manners and Rolo Montes, which is a better cast than most actual surf films manage.

    The lack of structure is the point. Nobody is building to anything, so you get long stretches of four good surfers in one good wave, shot in 4K, with none of the pacing a feature would impose.

    Still a companion piece rather than the film. If you only watch one of the three Postcards, watch this.

    Companion piece to the feature film Motel Hell (dir. Dave Fox), not the feature itself.

  • 28 min

    Postcards from Motel Hell, Part 3

    HD

    Harry Bryant, Wade Goodall, Craig Anderson, Tom Lowe

    About this film
    The Ireland leg, extended out to twenty eight minutes. Cold water, heavy waves, and a cast that shifts the tone away from the Indonesian looseness of Part 2: Wade Goodall and Craig Anderson both surf with more deliberation than Bryant does, and Tom Lowe is there for the genuinely frightening end of it.

    Ireland has become the default destination for surf films wanting to look serious, and this mostly avoids the cliche by not pretending the trip was profound.

    The shortest of the three Postcards and the most focused, since it has one place and one swell rather than a whole trip to cover.

    Companion piece to the feature film Motel Hell (dir. Dave Fox), not the feature itself. This is the extended Ireland section.

  • 30 min

    Pratte's Reef

    Directed by Kurt Schaefer

    About this film
    In 2000 an artificial reef went into Santa Monica Bay off Dockweiler State Beach, built from large sandbags and intended to make waves. It was named for Tom Pratte, a Surfrider co-founder who had fought the Chevron jetty approval and died in 1994. It never worked, and in 2008 it was removed.

    This is the film about that, and it is the only entry in the archive about surf politics rather than surfing. Artificial reefs have a long record of failure and Pratte's is the best documented case in the United States, having been the first structure in American waters conceived purely to improve surfing.

    Thirty minutes. Watch it if you have ever heard someone propose building a wave.

    SD transfer, best available.

  • 32 min

    Raw Irons

    MCDHD

    Andy Irons

    About this film
    An Andy Irons video profile from before the world titles, and one of the clearest records of what he looked like when he was still just the most promising surfer in Hawaii rather than the best in the world.

    The case for watching it is simple. Irons died in 2010 and the footage of him as a teenager surfing without any of the later weight is finite. This is a decent chunk of it, cleaned up to 1080p.

    The archive also holds Snapt and Snapt 2 from the same era, both of which feature him. Watching the three together is the closest thing available to a record of how fast he arrived.
  • 39 min

    Rise and Shine

    HICHD

    Directed by Bill Ballard

    Andy Irons

    About this film
    Bill Ballard was a Kauai videographer who spent the late nineties filming the surfers around him, which happened to include the Irons brothers before anyone outside Hawaii knew what that meant. Rise and Shine is an HIC production and, by Ballard's own account, carries a lot of Andy Irons footage.

    Ballard's films are the least polished things in this archive and among the most valuable, because he was simply there, with a camera, for a period that nobody knew at the time was going to matter.

    Pairs naturally with Raw Irons. Both are Andy before the titles, shot by people who had no idea they were making a historical document.
  • 41 min

    Riss

    2020Red Bull Media HouseHD

    Directed by Peter Hamblin

    Carissa Moore

    About this film
    A profile of Carissa Moore built around her 2019 season, which was both a world title run and an Olympic qualification campaign. Peter Hamblin directed, wrote and edited it, having previously made Let's Be Frank, which won an Emmy in 2016.

    The structure is a comeback rather than a coronation. Moore took her third title in 2015 and then went through a stretch that the film does not skip over, which is what gives the 2019 season its weight. Surfing documentaries about active competitors usually avoid that kind of material.

    It is also the only film in this archive with a woman as its sole subject other than Leave a Message, and the only one built around competitive surfing rather than away from it.
  • 30 min

    Rotten to the Core

    2016

    Directed by Matt Wybenga

    Jordy Smith, Jay Davies, Jack Freestone, Andrew Doheny

    About this film
    Matt Wybenga made this independently with no sponsor behind it, which by 2016 had become an unusual thing to attempt, and said plainly that he wanted a surf movie without the corporate apparatus around it.

    He got a better cast than that approach usually buys. Jordy Smith was a genuine world title contender at the time, and Jay Davies, Jack Freestone and Andrew Doheny were all in demand. Getting them into an unsponsored film says something about how the surfers themselves felt about brand videos by then.

    Thirty minutes, cut with punk styling. Worth watching next to Glad You Scored as the two films here most sceptical of the industry that normally pays for them.
  • 27 min

    Running on Fumes

    The Surf Channel

    Directed by Perry Gershkow

    About this film
    Perry Gershkow's other Mexican road film, and a companion to Take Me Back elsewhere in this archive. Same filmmaker, same country, same Surf Channel release, same instinct to drive the coast rather than fly to a known break.

    Twenty seven minutes working the Mexican coastline. If Take Me Back is the better documented of the two, this is the one that feels more like the trip itself: less structure, more driving.

    Watch them together. Two films by one person about the same stretch of coast is an unusual thing to have, and it makes the pair more interesting than either alone.
  • 40 min

    Second Thoughts

    2004Timmy Turner FilmsHD

    Directed by Timmy Turner

    Timmy Turner, Travis Potter, Brett Schwartz, Koby Abberton, Dylan Longbottom

    About this film
    Three surfers go to an uninhabited Indonesian island and stay there, and Timmy Turner films it and narrates it himself. That is a documentary premise rather than a surf video premise, and it is why Second Thoughts holds up where most 2004 releases do not.

    Turner, Travis Potter and Brett Schwartz are the three. What the film is actually about is what happens to people living rough for a long stretch in pursuit of waves, and it does not romanticise that as much as you would expect.

    Surfer named it Video of the Year for 2004. If you want one film from this archive that is a genuine documentary rather than surfing cut to music, this and the Gerry Lopez film are the two.
  • 24 min

    Sink or Swim

    2019Salty CrewHD

    Directed by James Rico Tull, Hayden Lane

    About this film
    Salty Crew sells to people who surf and fish, and this is a team film that takes both halves seriously rather than treating the fishing as a joke. James Rico Tull and Hayden Lane directed.

    That combination is rarer on film than it is in real life. Most surf brands pretend their customers do nothing else, so a release that spends real time on offshore fishing is a reasonable document of how a lot of people actually use the coast.

    Twenty four minutes. The least conventional brand video in the archive, and worth it if the hundredth barrel sequence is starting to blur.
  • 25 min

    Skinny Meat Head

    2024Chapter 11 TV, BillabongHD

    Directed by Dane Reynolds

    Eithan Osborne

    About this film
    Dane Reynolds spent his own career as the most watched freesurfer alive and now makes films about other people, which is a better outcome than most. This one is built around Eithan Osborne and took two years instead of the intended three months, because Osborne kept getting injured.

    The footage comes from Hawaii, Ireland, Australia, Portugal, Indonesia and Japan, and the title came from a nickname Matt McCabe gave Osborne on a drive out of San Francisco. It premiered in Ventura in November 2024.

    Reynolds directs the way he surfed, which is to say he is more interested in the odd moment than the clean one. Of the recent films here it is the most purely enjoyable.
  • 45 min

    Snapt

    2002

    Directed by Logan Dulien

    Andy Irons, Mick Fanning, Asher Pacey, Aaron Cormican

    About this film
    Logan Dulien started filming in mid 2000 on a cheap camera and finished with the film that defined how surfing looked for the next decade. Snapt has no budget, no concept and no narration. It is surfing cut to music by someone who cared more about the individual turn than about telling you anything, and that turned out to be the correct instinct.

    Andy Irons is the reason to watch it. This is him before the world titles, surfing with the aggression that made everything after it inevitable. Mick Fanning and Asher Pacey are here early too.

    Four more films followed and the series is still going, but the first one is the one that changed the grammar. The 480p you are watching is not a bad rip. It is the film, shot the way it was shot.

    SD transfer. No higher-resolution master exists: independent uploads of this film are identical at 480p.

  • 56 min

    Snapt 2: The Next Hit

    2003

    Directed by Logan Dulien

    Andy Irons, Bruce Irons, Mick Fanning, Asher Pacey, Aaron Cormican

    About this film
    Dulien turned the second one around fast, and it shows in the best way. Snapt 2 is more of the same with a bigger cast and more confidence, made while the first film was still working its way through every surf shop TV in the country.

    The Irons brothers are the centre of it. Andy was at the start of the run that would take him to three world titles, and Bruce surfs here like someone who knew he was the more interesting of the two and was not going to let it go unmentioned. Mick Fanning turns up again, a couple of years from his own first title.

    It is a document of a very specific moment when the best surfers alive were all willing to appear in a film shot by one guy with a camera and no money.

    SD transfer. Independent uploads of this film are identical at 480p, so no better master is in circulation.

  • 35 min

    Snapt 3: Reloaded

    HD

    Directed by Logan Dulien

    Mason Ho, Clay Marzo, Bobby Martinez

    About this film
    Dulien left the series alone for more than a decade and then came back to it, which almost never works and somehow did here. Snapt 3 arrives in an era when surf films had largely been replaced by clips, and its whole argument is that the long-form edit still has something the two minute upload does not.

    Mason Ho is the obvious heir to what the series has always been about: surfing that is funny and technical at the same time, in waves nobody else would bother with. Clay Marzo appears again, years after Young Guns, still surfing like the laws are different where he is.

    Shorter than the films either side of it, and better for it. If you have never seen a Snapt film, this is the easiest one to start with.
  • 51 min

    Snapt4

    2021HD

    Directed by Logan Dulien

    Mason Ho, Benji Brand, Jack Robinson

    About this film
    Snapt4 was meant to land in 2020 and did not, for reasons that need no explaining. It arrived the following year into a surf media landscape that had moved even further from the feature-length film, and Dulien made one anyway.

    It is the most polished thing in the series by a distance. Fifty one minutes, properly shot, and still built on the same principle he started with in 2000: find surfers who do something nobody else does, point a camera at them for a long time, cut it to music, explain nothing.

    Jack Robinson is in here before the world title, which makes it worth watching on its own. Mason Ho carries the comic register the series has relied on since Snapt 3.
  • 77 min

    Snapt5: The Final Cut

    2025HD

    Directed by Logan Dulien

    Mason Ho, Benji Brand

    About this film
    The last one, and Dulien said so up front. Snapt5 premiered at Sealegs in Huntington Beach on 2 August 2025, timed to the US Open, and closes a series he began on a cheap camera twenty five years earlier.

    At seventy seven minutes in 4K it is the longest and best-looking film in the archive, which is a strange fate for a franchise that started as the scrappiest thing in surfing. The through-line held though. It is still surfing cut to music with no narration and no argument beyond look at this.

    If you watch one film on this page, watch this one, then go back to Snapt from 2002 and see how little the idea had to change over a quarter of a century.
  • 43 min

    Somewhere, Anywhere, Everywhere

    2004GlobeHD

    About this film
    Globe's first surf film, released in 2004 after a long enough build-up that the surf press was describing it as long awaited before anyone had seen it. A skate and apparel company deciding to make a proper surf movie was a reasonable bet in 2004, when the brand video was the main way a company said anything about itself.

    It runs forty three minutes and sits in the middle of the period this archive covers most densely, between the raw late nineties material and the more considered films that came after.

    Globe would go on to make Dark Hollow, which is also in this archive and is the better film. This is where they started.
  • 40 min

    Take Me Back

    2014The Surf ChannelHD

    Directed by Perry Gershkow

    Austin Smith-Ford, Kyle Buthman, Kyle Thiermann

    About this film
    Three friends drive into mainland Mexico looking for waves, and Perry Gershkow filmed and cut it. Austin Smith-Ford, Kyle Buthman and Kyle Thiermann are the three, none of them famous, which is the point.

    Mainland Mexico is an unusual choice. The surf film industry goes to Indonesia, Tahiti or the North Shore, and a road trip through a country most of the industry treats as a stopover produces something closer to how people actually travel to surf.

    Forty minutes, and also released under the Spanish title Llevame de Vuelta. The least glamorous travel film here and the most recognisable if you have ever done a trip like it.
  • 55 min

    The Blueprint: Based on the Life of Shane Dorian

    2002Billabong

    Directed by Chad Campbell

    Shane Dorian, Kelly Slater, Taj Burrow, Mick Fanning, Rob Machado

    About this film
    Most surf films of this era were section reels with a surfer's name attached. The Blueprint actually tried to be about a person, and Chad Campbell built it around Shane Dorian at the point where Dorian was respected by everyone in the water and underrated by almost everyone outside it.

    It is Campbell's second film. His first, the 5th Symphony Document, had taken Surfer's Video of the Year in 2001, and you can see him pushing for something more ambitious here: interviews, structure, an argument about who Dorian was rather than a highlight tape.

    The supporting cast is absurd, because in 2002 Billabong could put Slater, Burrow, Fanning and Machado in a film and treat it as unremarkable. Worth knowing that Dorian's later life as a big wave surfer is nowhere in this. It is the Dorian who came before that.

    SD transfer, best available. A sharper upload exists but runs only 7 minutes, so it is an excerpt rather than the film.

  • 43 min

    The Ductumentary

    2013VansHD

    Directed by Graham Nash, Reagan Ritchie

    Joel Tudor

    About this film
    Joel Tudor won two world longboard titles, walked away from competitive surfing, and then built the Duct Tape Invitational into the only contest series that traditional longboarders take seriously. This Vans film is about why he did all three.

    It is more argumentative than most surf documentaries, because Tudor is more argumentative than most surfers. His position on how longboards should be ridden, and on what competition does to that, is not presented neutrally and the film is better for taking a side.

    Forty three minutes, and the only thing in this archive that treats longboarding as a serious discipline rather than a stylistic option. Worth watching before any of the log films here.
  • 35 min

    The Hunt for Hipmasama

    2014

    Directed by Oli Adams

    Oli Adams

    About this film
    Oli Adams saw a grainy photograph of a wave posted online and spent eight years trying to find it. This is the film about that, which he directed himself and also stars in, and it won Best British Film at the London Surf Film Festival in 2014 where it premiered.

    The premise is better than most surf films manage because it has an actual question at the centre of it, and the answer is not guaranteed. Adams has since described the edit as brutal, which is believable for a first film assembled from nearly a decade of material.

    Thirty five minutes, and the only British film in this archive. A useful corrective if the Indonesian boat trips start to feel interchangeable.
  • 34 min

    The Kerrazy Kronicles

    2011Kerrazy Productions

    Directed by Josh Kerr, Matt Scorringe

    Josh Kerr

    About this film
    Josh Kerr's first film as his own subject, and the debut release of his company Kerrazy Productions. He co-directed it with Matt Scorringe, which in practice means a surfer with an aerial game ahead of the judging criteria got to decide how his own surfing was presented.

    It premiered at the Lido Theatre and then rolled out online in ten minute episodes, which was a reasonable response to where surf media was heading in 2011 and is why the full version is worth having in one piece.

    Kerr was never a world title contender and the film is better for it. Nothing here is building towards a ranking, so it is just him and his friends finding waves worth doing something stupid in.

    SD transfer, best available.

  • 54 min

    The Ritual

    1999Ocean & Earth

    Directed by Matt Gye

    About this film
    Ocean & Earth's first full length film, from 1999, built around a group of South Coast Australian teenagers before any of them reached the World Tour. Matt Gye shot and directed it across Australia, Indonesia and Hawaii.

    What makes it worth keeping is exactly what made it unremarkable at the time. This is a regional board-accessory brand filming the kids on its own doorstep, with no expectation that anyone outside New South Wales would care. The result is a straight record of a particular coast at a particular moment, which the bigger-budget films of the same year cannot offer.

    The brand put it online itself, which makes this one of the more durable pointers in the archive.

    Transferred from a 1999 VHS release. The brand describes pulling it out of the vault for YouTube.

  • 101 min

    The Yin and Yang of Gerry Lopez

    2021Patagonia FilmsHD

    Directed by Stacy Peralta

    Gerry Lopez

    About this film
    The most serious piece of filmmaking in this archive, and the only one directed by someone with a reputation outside surfing. Stacy Peralta made Dogtown and Z-Boys, and he brings the same method here: a subject who shaped a sport, interviewed properly, with the archive footage to back the claims.

    Gerry Lopez earned the name Mr Pipeline by surfing Pipe in the early seventies with a composure nobody had shown there before. The film covers that, and also the parts of his life that complicate the legend, including Indonesia and the long second act.

    At an hour and forty one minutes it asks more of you than anything else here. It is also the one to show someone who does not surf.
  • 30 min

    Under The Weather

    2012

    Directed by Damon Meade

    Maz Quinn, Ricardo Christie, Bobby Hansen, Johnny Hicks, Luke Cederman, Billy Stairmand

    About this film
    Shot entirely in New Zealand, from the far north to the deep south, by Damon Meade in 2012. The cast is essentially the Kiwi surf scene of the period: Maz Quinn, Ricardo Christie, Billy Stairmand and the rest.

    It was crowdfunded, raising a little over eighteen thousand dollars against a smaller target, and Meade said from the outset that it would stay online and free permanently. He has kept to that, which is more than most films in this archive can claim.

    New Zealand is almost absent from surf film despite having a long and serious coastline, so thirty minutes devoted entirely to it fills a genuine gap. Pairs with Lost Track New Zealand, shot there eight years later with a much bigger budget.
  • 91 min

    What's Really Goin' On

    1995Lost

    About this film
    Lost's first proper video, from 1995, made by the San Clemente board company Matt Biolos built. It belongs to the period when a surf brand's video was its main statement of identity, and Lost's identity was deliberately abrasive in a way the bigger companies could not risk.

    Its footnote in surfboard history is real: it is credited as the first surf film of the VHS era to give the fish its own segment, at a point when the shortboard was assumed to be the only serious option.

    A note on the name. Lost's own history calls this one What's Really Goin' On, while Surfer's archive lists a 1995 Lost video called What's Really Goin' Wrong. Both may exist.

    SD transfer, best available. At 91 minutes the upload runs much longer than a mid-nineties brand video usually did, so it may be a double bill or an extended compilation rather than the original cut.

  • 29 min

    Yeah Dude

    2013

    Directed by Toby Cregan

    Creed McTaggart

    About this film
    A California road trip with a mixed Australian and American cast, directed by Toby Cregan, who made it and cut it alongside Creed McTaggart. McTaggart is the surfer worth the twenty nine minutes: around 2013 he was the most interesting young Australian in the water and had no interest in a competitive record.

    It belongs to the brief period when the best surf films were being made by the surfers' own friends on small budgets, before that became a formula. Nothing in it is trying to sell anything, which was unusual then and is rarer now.

    Not to be confused with a 2007 ski film of the same name from the Poor Boyz crew.
  • 53 min

    Young Guns 3

    2007QuiksilverHD

    Kelly Slater, Dane Reynolds, Clay Marzo, Julian Wilson, Jeremy Flores, Ry Craike, Garrett Parkes

    About this film
    The third Young Guns is the one people actually argue about, and it won Movie of the Year at the 2007 Surfer Poll for good reason. Six months of filming out of Australia with trips to Hawaii and the Maldives gave it room the first film never had, and the cast had grown into itself: Dane Reynolds mid-transformation into the most imitated surfer of his generation, Clay Marzo surfing in a way nobody has successfully copied since, Julian Wilson at seventeen with a section people still bring up.

    Garrett Parkes was fifteen. Slater, again, is the adult in the room.

    What separates it from the brand videos it sits beside is that the surfing is genuinely strange rather than just good. If you want one film to explain why the mid-2000s mattered to anyone who was watching then, it is this one.