Within every crisis arises an opportunity. The San Diego Surf Film Festival had a record-setting year in May with over 4,000 guests all enjoying the finest in international surf cinema, art and music for four days. Aside from amazing films, festival highlights included an overflowing Sonny Miller Tribute introduced by surprise guest Tom Curren, art by Andy Davis and friends, a Chris Burkard photography workshop and surfing expression sessions. All this while raising a much-needed $2,500 for our non-profit H20 Trash Patrol.
Meanwhile, the 2015 Byron Bay Surf Festival: canceled. The 2015 New York Surf Film Festival: canceled. The 2015 North Shore Surf Film Festival: canceled. The 2015 Canadian Surf Film Festival: canceled. The 2015 Durban Surf Film Festival: canceled.
Since the SDSFF’s inception just four short years ago, all of these festivals have been forced to shut their doors much to the dismay of their local communities. In fact, there are only about a dozen or so solid surf film festivals around the globe, with numbers seeming to dwindle every year. The plain truth is it’s just very difficult to run an international film festival on extremely limited resources. Fortunately, the SDSFF quickly received internationally acclaim in addition to record growth year after year. And yet, the unimaginable is happening. Even at our zenith, the SDSFF ironically finds ourselves in the same dire situation as the rest of these extinct festivals. We are on the verge of having to close down just the same.
But within every crisis arises an opportunity.
The crisis lies in securing a year round community focused venue, and without it there is simply no way to maintain the sustainability of the San Diego Surf Film Festival. And how is that an opportunity? Our proposed venue will expand our possibilities to support independent artists, filmmakers, and musicians exponentially and even create a positive and creative environment for those taking their first artistic steps. So instead of cancelling the SDSFF we are determined to face this challenge and actually flourish from it. The Misfit Pictures Headquarters will be a centrally-located San Diego venue with a focus on art, film and music with a dedicated crew unlike anything else around. The HQ Art Gallery will feature monthly shows presenting the world’s finest artists and unknowns alike. The HQ Cinema will screen our two festivals and other films in state of the art HD and a perfectly comfortable setting. We even invited Tom Curren to come down and break in our HQ Stage with a spell-binding musical set of his own.
A Misfit Pictures Headquarters indiegogo fundraiser campaign has been launched in order to make this possible. Skip Frye was approached with the idea and he donated 25 autographed fins to help with fundraising without blinking an eye. That gave us the momentum to continue and since then we’ve received vital support and amazing goods from people like Matt Beard, Damian Fulton, Heather Brown, Chris Viverito, Brownfish Handplanes, Nathan Paul Gibbs, Christine Brailsford Caro, Keith Boyd, Skye Walker, Nathan Ledyard, Josh Rufford, Joe Hodnicki, Spencer Reynolds, Cori Schumacher and Maria Cerda.
And now the biggest obstacle is simply spreading awareness of the campaign. It’s going to take the full village for this one, but we are going to make it one way or another.
Editor’s Note: The Misfit Pictures HQ campaign saw a promising start but they still have a lot of support to gather. With just over two weeks left they still have a chance to keep the SDFF alive. We all know people who would love to support the Misfit Pictures Headquarters, they just have to find out about it. You can spread the word and contribute to making the Misfit Pictures HQ a reality here.
