It’s easy to feel as if seeing one new surf edit means you’ve seen them all. Alex Smith’s and filmmaker Benoit Lalande’s new NOMÁD AFRICA is different. It’s eclectic. It’s colorful. It’s pieced together with what seems like every bit of attention given to the filmmaking process first and the surfing second — backed by the simple fact that you won’t watch a single wave in the next 1:53 to completion. So how do we shift our focus? How do we move our attention away from examining the things we expect when watching a pro surfer surf: the most critical turns, the deepest tube, stomping out the biggest air? Truth be told, we don’t get much of a choice in Lalande’s new work. It’s an obviously different approach to your everyday surf edit, which is to say it’s not really a surf edit at all. It’s 1:53 of a visual art piece…with some waves. After all, we still really like waves.
