Back in the day when days were simpler. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Back in 1974, an era that is often considered to be surfing’s halcyon days, things were different. Lineups weren’t clogged. Breaks were undiscovered. Getting to waves wasn’t quite as easy as it is these days, and surf camps weren’t set up in front of all the good ones. In A Winter’s Tale, Phil Sheppard directed one of the earliest, truly international surf films.
Featuring legends like Tom Farley, Simon Anderson, and Ben Apia, it was filmed in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Hawaii. It’s a full-length film with a 90-minute run time, and in it, 50 of the best surfers of the era showed they were on the cusp of the future. Without surfers like them, surfing wouldn’t have evolved into what it is today, and those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. This particular bit is from the Hawaiian segment and it’s hard to watch without wishing you were there, not only in space, but in time.
This clip features waves from Pipeline, Off-the-Wall, and surfers like Midget Farrelly and George Sakamoto. Speaking of the past, the reason we’re able to show this snippet from A Winter’s Tale is because the Surf Film Archive was hard at work finding, restoring, and preserving lost and otherwise forgotten surf films. Parts from Indonesia, Padang Padang, along with legends of the surf like Greenough can be found there. It took them five years to do it, and their channel is well worth the endless hours you can spend on it. It’s a rabbit hole worth diving down.
