By Charlie Smith
I went to a screening of Thomas Campbell’s newest artisan surf film The Present in Los Angeles. The attending crowd wore paint splattered work boots, not-hip denim in not-hip cuts, sports jackets over art series t-shirts, Palestinian scarves, Aids beards and knit caps. A three-piece band called Ray Barbee & The Mattson 2 played loose guitar jazz while dressed in not-real throwback 60s suits. Ray Barbee is an African-American.
The movie opens with a pair of hands putting film into an old Bolex 16mm camera. It then cuts to a shot of silhouetted men walking in the distance with different sorts of surfboards while Thomas Campbell explains, in voiceover, that The Present can mean two things; a gift and, like, right now. He likes this rad duality and refuses to settle for an either/or definition. This is his Present.
His present is highly saturated, grainy and out of focus a lot. The viewer is maybe left to imagine that the movie’s point of view is debatable, since the camera meanders slowly and refuses to dictate what is or is not important. But it’s totally not debatable since the color is highly saturated, grainy and out of focus a lot and we just saw some hands loading 16mm film into an old Bolex camera. The point of view is ART and surfing as ART. And not surfing, but wave sliding, which his voice over says many times.
Dan Malloy goes to Bali and slides a wooden board in saturated slo-mo.
Sofia Mulanovich slides in the barrel and flashes a peace sign in saturated slo-mo.
Lots of longboarders walk the nose in saturated slo-mo.
People laugh and smile in saturated slo-mo.
Ry Craike slides so good that it doesn’t even matter if he’s in saturated slo-mo. Totally watchable and doesn’t even matter if the camera is lagging behind him and maybe focusing on a nude Polynesian fondling his sister.
A low point comes when Yves Chouinard is filmed in his shaping area and Thomas Campbell is voiceovering about sustainable surfboard technology. Sustainable because it is stronger and will last longer, “spending more time under your feet and less time in landfills.” There are cut away sections of Dan Malloy, in saturated slo-mo, riding the sustainable technology and it looks like it is bogging him down. He looks like he’d be ripping on a modern sled, but he’s almost accidentally burying the rail on lo-fi sustainability. In saturated slo-mo.
Another low point comes when Alex Knost calls Michel Junod and invites him on an African surf trip. Alex is calling from a payphone in a saturated, grainy, small dark room with a red light. Michel Junod is in his shaping area and has a four-year-old flip phone. The lighting of Alex, and him being on a payphone and Michel Junod being on an unhip cell makes it feel that something illicit is happening. That Michel “keeps” a young man for sexual satisfaction and, like, part of the allure is making phone sex on lousy technology.
A high point comes during a bit of sketch comedy. Rob Machado and Dane Reynolds judge an expression session which features Alex Knost riding a Nordic-trac, dressed in workout clothes, while on a surfboard. Chris Malloy emerging from a coffin dressed as Dracula while on a surfboard. And Dan Malloy climbing a ladder which has been nailed to a surfboard. The surf is all two-to-four foot and they all ride down the line really well and it’s funny.
Another high point comes when Dane surfs winter Ventura. I can’t remember how it is shot, or what music is playing in the background, because Dane proceeds to punt higher than anything I have seen. I’m not being hyperbolic. He does an air so big and weird and lands it. All the artisanal souls who were watching the sliding groaned with disbelief and amazement.
Non-throwback hi-fi wins the day.
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Reply #2 on : Sat October 31, 2009, 17:39:26