Chris DelMoro from The Heart & The Sea
TB: Do you think filmmaking has lived up to your dreams of making surf films?
NO: Definitely. My dreams, when I first began filmmaking, were pretty simple. I was just enjoying the creative experience of making something that had meaning for me. I had no idea of the momentum my work would gather in reaching the audience that it has. My films are fairly left of center and appeal to only a niche market in surfing, as opposed to more mainstream surf films, but now they have been watched by surfers from all around the world. The audience might not be that large, but it’s widespread. I’m always humbled when I get emails or messages or letters from people from various places overseas. I’m touched and grateful for their feedback and interest in my work. Also, I’ve been blessed to have met a lot of people and to have made precious, lifelong friendships through making my films. For me, that has been the most unexpected and the most enduring and noteworthy part of the whole experience. I’m really thankful for that. So, for all of these reasons, filmmaking has gone beyond my dreams.
TB: How critical are you of your own work after the film is done and has been out on the market? Do you ever look back at your films and see where you could improve? How self-critical are you and do you think it’s important as a filmmaker to go back over your films with a more critical eye?
NO: I’m a bit of a melancholy perfectionist. The strength of that personality trait is that you’re constantly driven to create, to make the best thing that you’re capable of. So I’m very particular about how I want my work to be. I scrutinize what I make with a very critical eye. I’m determined, too. It takes a lot of hard work over a few years to make a feature length surf film all on your own. In lots of ways, it’s almost like you need to have that kind of personality for filmmaking. The flipside, of course, is that your strength is your weakness. When you have that perfectionist tendency and melancholy leaning, you can become overly reflective to the point of being too self-critical. You can become so absorbed in your work, you become so close to it, that it makes it difficult to step back and evaluate it with an objective eye as an audience would. To be honest, I hardly ever watch my own films once they are finished, but when I do I always see room for improvement and things that I’d change. But I’ve learned that happens with lots of things I’ve made: poetry, writing, songs, films, surfboards. It’s just a matter of acceptance, really, that you made something and now you’ve perhaps moved away from that place. All art happens in the context of a place and time. It becomes a record from a past that you no longer inhabit. But having said all that, you also want to make something that stands the test of time.
TB: What sparked the need to create “Lines From A Poem?”
NO: “Lines” kind of began unintentionally really. I’ve never had any training in filmmaking, but I was always interested in photography growing up, and always a fan of surf films. It was a dream I had tucked away in my heart to maybe one day have a go at making my own film. I’d grown up surfing, taking photographs and watching surf films, so for me the transition to surf filmmaking was a natural progression. It happened in a really kind of organic way, just as an extension of my surfing life, like making my own surfboards. I’d finally got a camera, and friends and I used to take turns filming each other. After a while, I began to be the one who was behind the camera the most, and I started to play around with editing little shorts, just to share among my friends. I enjoyed the creativity of capturing and cutting the images, the simple joy of making something. It all kind of grew from there and I taught myself along the way. The shorts began to merge together and before I knew it, I was working on a feature-length surf film. At the time, I had no idea how well and how widely “Lines From A Poem” was going to be received. My plan was just to dub a bunch of VHS copies and hand them out to friends.
TB: Can you describe the process of making that film? How did you get started? How long did it take to complete? How did you go about putting together the cast for the film?
NO: Like I said, the process of making “Lines” unfolded gradually and almost unintentionally. It grew from something that was just a personal little creative exploration with friends. It took me about two years to make. I didn’t have a plan, a storyboard, a cast. I just documented the surfers I met along the way. I chose to document logging because I loved it so much and, with the exception of Thomas Campbell’s beautiful film “The Seedling,” I felt that logging was an overlooked and underground niche in surfing. Also, of course, I felt that logging was really aesthetically pleasing and photogenic. So, really, “Lines From A Poem” was just a film that emerged out of that particular time in my surfing and creative life.
Dane Peterson from “The Heart & The Sea”
TB: How did “Seaworthy” come about? Did you expect that film to do as well as it did? Many surfers that I knew loved that film and really resonated with the overall vibe and mood of the film.
NO: After making “Lines From A Poem,” I definitely felt like I’d learned a lot, and I felt certain that I had another better surf film in me. But I wasn’t in any hurry. Our firstborn son Noa was born two days after we premiered the film, and I just soaked up the experience of being a dad and not worrying about making anything for a while, other than a few surfboards. But after a time I got creatively restless again, and felt the need to start working on something. A little bit of money was trickling through from “Lines” and we saved up enough to buy a better camera and I started shooting for “Seaworthy.”
I didn’t really have any idea about where the film was heading, but I started collecting images and ideas. Then, without warning after a perfectly healthy pregnancy, our daughter Willow was stillborn. For my wife Eliza and I, it was the deepest darkest experience of our lives. The grief journey was immensely difficult and impossibly long. “Seaworthy,” really, grew out of that place. Making the film was a kind of therapy for me. My heart, as a grieving father, was what drove me to have the energy to make the film. All I wanted was to tell my daughter’s story, to tell the world how much I longed for her, to share with others how sacred the gift of life truly is. Also, I wanted to share my gratitude for how a surfing life helped carry me through that tragedy. There were times in the extremities of grief where all I could do to stay alive was to go into the sea. Just to get into all that endless water.
“Seaworthy” was all about the water, about being in it, on it, under it, along it, across it, inside it. Literally and figuratively, the water carries us through our lives. We are upheld by something larger than ourselves. I think these are some of the subtler messages in “Seaworthy” that may have resonated with people. I’m grateful they gave the film time to soak in and it means a lot to me personally to hear that “Seaworthy” touched their hearts.
TB: Your next film “The Heart & The Sea” is being released. What can we expect from this film? How is this film different from your other films?
NO: I think people who are familiar with my work might recognize some kind of continuity with my previous films, in terms of cast, themes and the overall texture and tone. In lots of ways, I think “The Heart & The Sea” moves forward from where “Seaworthy” concluded. “Seaworthy” explored some difficult themes–the personal tragedy of losing our daughter Willow, grief and despair and learning to grow through those things, but by the end of the film it was about a kind of return to joy. “The Heart & The Sea” takes that feeling further, that sense of new hope and gratitude for the gift of being alive.
When I’d finished watching “Seaworthy” for the first time with my good friend Tom Wegener, he told me that he was proud of me that I took that film to such a personal and vulnerable place of broken-heartedness. But in the same conversation, he predicted that the next film I would make would be all about joy. I’m happy to say that Tom was right. The film is called “The Heart & The Sea” because it celebrates the richest gifts of a surfing life: healthy relationships with family and friends and a shared intimacy we have with the sea and each other through surfing. Joy and thankfulness for these things are really what the film is all about.
I guess another way in which this new film is different to my previous ones is that I had the opportunity to travel a little wider. The film is shot here in various places in Australia, as well as in New Zealand, France and Spain. It was a real pleasure and privilege as a filmmaker to have the opportunity to explore new landscapes, seascapes, cultures and people. That’s something I’d love to do more of in the future. All of those trips were family trips too and it was wonderful for my wife and I to share those experiences of travel with our kids, to see them soaking it all in with wide-eyed wonder. We are really thankful that my surf filmmaking opened those doors for us to have such precious family adventures.
