Surfing - Once upon a wave | DW Documentary

Surfing is more than just a sport. For Polynesians, it's a centuries-old tradition, an expression of both culture and identity. The art of surfing originated with the Polynesians, but a hundred years ago, surfing had all but been forgotten. Then, it gradually revived, thanks to the efforts of one Hawaiian man, a handful of young dropouts, businessmen and bold young women. Today, millions of people surf all over the world. They are part of a mythos that celebrates freedom, adventure and a connection with the elements. This film tells the story of how that mythos was born and how it is kept alive today. Welcome to Tahiti, a surfer's paradise with its Tiajupo wave, known as the world's most beautiful. This wave is legendary. It's like a wild animal, a tiger. The wave breaks on the reef, where the water is only one meter high. Tiajupo can be seriously scary. The wave comes and the ocean suddenly hits you with full force, unleashing enormous power. It's a really scary wave. You must show respect and humility, because you never know what might happen. Vahini Fero and Kauli Vast are two of the best surfers in the world. They were born in Polynesia and have been surfing the Tiajupo wave since childhood. Sometimes you have to wait a long time and be patient. Everyone wants their wave. There's an order that you have to respect. Suddenly a wave comes and you think, this is the wave I've been waiting for. You have to paddle hard and then you see the sea receding. You see the corals as if they're waiting for you. You feel like your center of gravity is shifting, like you're sliding sideways. I descend and descend and think, don't fall. When you're inside the barrel, you're back up and you're completely surrounded by water. The wave breaks and it's as if time stands still. Then suddenly you're thrown out from behind. That's the best feeling. When that happens, you know the wave was good. You can only experience such powerful moments when you become one with the elements. Tiajupo is also very spiritual. Surfing is closely linked to the lives and traditions of the Polynesians. And to understand what surfing means to them, you have to understand surfing's beauty, depth and spirituality. And its respect for the ocean. I had learned from my family about traditional wood boards. It's bringing back the spirit of that tree in a different form. Tom Pohako Stone preserves the culture of his ancestors. Now over 70 years old, he is respected by surfers all over the world. Everything that everyone surfs on today originates from the boards that was designed by my kupuna, my ancestors. And that is the foundation of it. When we left the continent of Asia, Southeast Asia, we gave up land. Ocean becomes home. Many believe that the Polynesians set off on huge pirogues from southern China some 6,000 years ago and reached Indonesia and the Philippines at around the same time as the pharaohs were building the first pyramids in Egypt. They landed on Tahiti around the same time as the fall of the Roman Empire in Europe. From there, over the following centuries, they made their way to Hawaii, Easter Island and finally New Zealand. Shipping was a cornerstone for the development of our society. The sea is our origin. We're a people of Oceana, as it's called today. We learned to conquer the sea before we mastered land. We were constantly on the move. We had to discover land areas, take possession of them and survive there. Waves are part of the tides that cross the ocean. In the Pacific, they travel thousands of kilometers, shaped by the wind. The ability to navigate the sea and its waves makes it possible to create connections between islands and entire continents. We are one people, connected by the sea. And our migration took us through so many islands, so many places throughout the oceans. And surfing becomes an extension of that migration. I always saw it as an art form that was understanding how the water moved. It's a very complex thing. It's a ballet. I think that we tell our own story with our surfing style. For example, I use it to express where I come from and who I am. People often say that I dance too much on the wave. But that's part of our culture. We're dancers too. It's something personal. Everyone has their own style. Huge waves. Gentle gliding. The combination of opposites that characterizes surfing is also expressed in the concept of mana, a sacred life force, an energy that permeates all of existence. Mana is a spiritual energy that is present throughout Polynesia. We talk about possessing mana and passing it on. This energy is also represented through traditional dances, expressing love, war, strength, courage, wisdom and sharing. The arrival of the first Europeans in the 18th century was to have serious consequences for these ancient cultures in which surfing played a sacred role. Whether Protestant, Catholic or Anglican, Christian missionaries were tasked with converting the peoples of Oceania to European morals. Among other things, that meant no more nudity and only one God. The missionaries did frown upon doing things just for fun. You know, you should be more productive, you should be growing things, you should be learning things, not going out playing in the surf. So more and more people have jobs. More and more people are working on sugar plantations. They have to work. If they're going to get paid, they've got to be there when they're told to be there. The Polynesians were quickly decimated by diseases brought over from Europe. In less than a century, the population of Tahiti fell from 100,000 to 6,000. Western culture displaced the culture of the Oceanic peoples. By the end of the 19th century, surfing had disappeared from almost all Polynesian islands. So how did surfing become a worldwide phenomenon a century later? A widespread leisure activity, a lifestyle. An elite sport with crowds of spectators, competitions and a lucrative business model. How did the Polynesian tradition not only revive, but thrive, spreading around the world? The answer can be found on a stretch of beach in Waikiki on the Hawaiian islands. Here stands the statue of the man who is considered the founder of modern surfing, Duke Kahanamoku, also known as the Duke. Born in 1890, he grew up in Hawaii when the island state was still a kingdom. And he was one of the few people who still mastered the art of traditional surfing. Duke Kahanamoku was a waterman. He grew up at Waikiki from when he was a little child. He was in the water at Waikiki, learning to paddle a canoe, learning to fish, learning to surf. He loved Waikiki and he loved being on the ocean. In 1906, when Thomas Edison came to Hawaii, which had been annexed by the United States just a few years earlier, with one of the first film cameras, Duke was 16 years old. Edison discovered the legendary Waikiki Beach and filmed young people surfing. At the time, surfing was largely unknown. The year 1911 marked a historic moment. White Hawaiian settlers who trained in private clubs organized a swimming competition. Duke, who had become a U.S. citizen through the Hawaiian Organic Act of 1900, defied the racist prejudices of the whites and took part. To everyone's astonishment, he beat the world record in the 100-meter freestyle by more than four seconds. Between 1912 and 1924, Duke Kahanamoku won a total of three Olympic gold medals and two silver medals in swimming. He became an icon. He traveled around the world and was celebrated in Australia, New Zealand and on the west coast of the United States. He also became an advertising star, making surfing an attraction in his home country. People were thrilled to meet him. To be able to shake Duke's hand, to be able to say, I shook Duke Kahanamoku's hand, was something that people would brag about. That's when he is the ambassador. That's when he's the guy who's helping to spread surfing. Thanks to Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaii attracted more and more tourists and Waikiki Beach became the symbol of the revival of surfing. But it was someone else who helped popularize surfing outside of Hawaii and throughout the United States. Tom Blake grew up in the midwest of the United States in the 1920s, pretty far from the ocean and any surfing opportunities. Tom Blake is an orphan, bounced around throughout his childhood. And he meets Duke Kahanamoku in a movie theater in Detroit, Michigan. Duke comes over and shakes his hand. Blake was fascinated by Duke Kahanamoku and soon moved to Hawaii to immerse himself in Polynesian culture. He goes to Waikiki and Duke takes Tom Blake under his wing. And then Tom Blake idolizes Duke. Tom Blake also learned everything he could about the Polynesian surfing tradition. He then began to redesign the surfboard. He hollowed it out to make it lighter and gave it a different shape and size. After intensive research and experimentation, he came up with the idea of attaching a fin to the back of the board in the mid-1930s. An innovation that greatly improved the surfboard's maneuverability. In 1935, Tom Blake wrote one of the most important books in the history of surfing, Hawaiian Surfboard. While on board, either surfing or paddling, one is truly free from land-bound restrictions. For that hour, he is the captain of his fate, of his miniature ship. The burden of city, school, job, as well as the cares and worries of the subconscious mind are erased and forgotten until the tensions of living again build up. The remedy again is obvious. Go surfing. The Duke's teachings were now available to all. Duke Anamoku and Tom Blake had carried the sacred fire into the world. In the early 1950s, surfing fever was raging along the California coast. The ancient Polynesian sport was attracting hundreds of young people who had radically broken with the American way of life. Enthusiastic surfers formed communities along the beaches of California's most beautiful towns. Wind and sea, swamis, trestles, and the beach widely regarded as the jewel of the West Coast, Malibu. There was one area where you walked down a hill to get to the beach, and in that area they called it the pit. There was nobody to tell you what to do. Surfing wasn't in the mainstream at all, it was just like sort of a tribes. All they lived for was surfing. It was their way of expressing because that was the lifestyle. It was just the strangest, craziest group of people. They didn't work. That was the joke. How did they make money? Nobody knows. They survived. One of these freedom-loving surfers was penniless and proud, Mickey Dora. Mickey Dora's influence can be summarized in one word, lifestyle. On the beach in Malibu, he invented the beach bum lifestyle for social misfits and hedonists, an image that stuck for decades of surfers. In one of Mickey Dora's rare audio recordings, he tells his story. My whole life is a cave. My whole life is this wave I dropped into. Set the whole thing up, pull out the bottom turn, pull up into it, and shoot for my life. And behind me, all the pickles over my back. The screaming parents, teachers, police, priests, politicians. It hurts my ******* knees. Mickey was a rogue. His reputation was kind of like a rogue. Like he was anti-establishment, kind of anti-everything, you know? But he was kind of cool. He'd do things like he'd be out in the water after you get to know him a little bit. He'd go, go, go man. And then he'd take off behind you and just push you off. Man, they called him the cat. All the kids at the beach, he was like a cat. Increasingly, the Polynesian tradition faded into the background. Alongside others, Mickey Dora opted for innovative boards made of polyurethane foam blocks instead of traditional wooden ones. Weighing only a few kilos, these synthetic boards made gliding easier, faster, and more acrobatic. Everyone wanted to copy Mickey Dora. The board that bore his name became a worldwide bestseller. By the 1950s, surfing had become a symbol of youthful emancipation. Along with Marlon Brando's motorcycle and James Dean's car, there was now Elvis Presley's Hawaiian shirt and Gidget's surfboard. All I wanted to do was surf. That's all. Surfing was no longer a sport for rebels. Thanks to Hollywood, it had become synonymous with beach holidays and sunset romance. This was also the birth of surfing as a popular sport. In the late 1950s, it spread throughout Europe, where it took hold of the next generation and the next. When I was nine years old, I was on a family vacation in Brittany, and I saw a little bodyboard that I really wanted. And my mother bought it for me. And then I surfed on this bodyboard, I think for 10 days or so, until my whole stomach was scraped open. And I came home with blue lips every day. I started surfing when I was 10 or 11 years old, on weekends and during vacations. It was like a bubble where I had all the freedom. I had fun. I was in the sea, totally in love with the salty water, the waves. I would never want to separate surfing from these moments of joy, relaxation, total freedom and sharing. That's surfing for me. By the mid-1960s, the surfing community had grown from a few hundred dropouts to millions of enthusiasts. The counterculture, with its freedom-loving rights, was swamped by a mass of vacationers and casual surfers. It was too much for the real surfers. It was only one solution, to get out. Three Californians set off with their cameras in search of a new paradise with unexplored beaches and waves in the southern hemisphere. Their film, The Endless Summer, documents a surfing trip around the world. It was a cold, foggy winter morning in November when Mike and Robert were ready to depart on the first leg of their endless summer journey around the world. You can't tell how good a wave is until you actually ride it. On Mike's first ride, the first five seconds, he knew he'd finally found that perfect wave. The film popularised the myth of the nomad surfer travelling around the world with a mattress in the back of a minibus and boards on the roof, surfing waves on lonely beaches, at the mercy of the seasons, winds and tides. The surfing trip followed the hippie wave around the globe. Kuta Beach in Bali became to surfers what Kathmandu in Nepal is known for. Mike Hinson was one of the protagonists of The Endless Summer. For him, this way of life went hand-in-hand with mind-expanding substances. A lot of pot smoking, LSD. We wanted to turn everybody on in the world with the LSD. You know, good old days, you know. During those days, there was a lot you could get away with, you know. Created a lifestyle, you know, of not working and being self-employed, you know. I've been out of county jail. I never really got in trouble for anything big, you know. It's just part of the lifestyle. But for countless others, nothing matches the adrenaline rush of surfing a huge wave. After all, if you're going to flirt with death, you might as well have fun doing it. The north shore of the Hawaiian island of Oahu is known for its special weather conditions. From October to March, storms moving across the Pacific towards Alaska create huge waves on the open sea. A group of surfers invented big wave surfing here. Among them is one of the most daring surfers in California, Greg Noll. Duke, it's a real honor to be here on your island for this Invitational Surfing Championship. Well, Bruce, I'm glad you came to Hawaii. With the support of the legendary Duke Kahanamoku, the north shore became the new stronghold of US surfers and the site of the first major competition in Duke's honor. Big wave surfing presented surfers with very special challenges. I become a hunter when I'm in the lineup and I wait for the set. I see the waves coming, then I become a hunter for a brief moment because I'm chasing the wave I want. You need perfect technique. It looks easy from the outside, like a picture postcard. But when you're surfing, you have to move like a cat. It's very precise. I love that. The slightest mistake and the wave will hit you relentlessly. When I saw how high the wave was, a mountain of black water was coming towards me. I'd never seen such a big wave in my life. I was in the right place at the right time. That was my moment. I didn't hesitate and I thought, that's why you're here, just do it. Don't think about the risk of dying. Just go for it. When you fall, the first thing to consider is the impact. Hitting water at 80 kilometers per hour is hard. The wave has a circular motion, which means you're repeatedly sucked up, thrown down, sucked up, thrown down. It can cause your eardrum to burst. After the first wave, I was out of breath. Then a second wave broke over my head and I didn't have time to catch my breath. When I came back up, there were three more waves, so I had to go under again. When I fell, I thought, that's it, thanks, let's see what happens next. But I was unhurt and everything went well. You never know that you won't be swallowed up by the wave. You have to trust the ocean. Sometimes it shakes you up. Sometimes I misjudge the situation and then I have to reflect on it in the hospital. In the late 1960s, the surf revolution continued on the other side of the Pacific, in Australia. In this run-down garage, a new chapter of surfing history was being written as a group of young surfers worked on wetsuits. They founded a clothing brand that specialised in cold-water surfing, Rip Curl. On the other side of the street, meanwhile, a brand that made surf shorts was founded, Quicksilver. The Australians revolutionised the way people surfed. They came up with the idea of using smaller boards. The shortboard was much more manoeuvrable than the larger boards and allowed for higher speeds along the waves. It wasn't long before more and more Australian surfers took to the beaches of Hawaii. Their takeover began on Hawaii's North Shore. During the early 70s, a whole new generation of Australians decided they wanted to make their mark here on the North Shore. And so they were young, they were brash, they were aggressive, they were arrogant. They wanted to break down the door that the Hawaiians had been dominant here on the North Shore and they wanted to prove that they could do better. All of a sudden, all these aggro-crazy Australians show up and they have no respect for the local environment in the line-up. And they're just like, they're like rats. And they're just going, and they're just taking everything with no respect. And they create this atmosphere, environment in the water that takes away the sharing. And the Hawaiians said, screw you guys. This is our home, our surf. You're coming here. You're disrespecting us by this attitude. And as native peoples, we're not going to tolerate that. We're going to retaliate against that. We're going to hammer you. We're going to put you on the plane and send you home. Don't come back. The uprising in Hawaii became a rallying cry. Local surfers known as Black Shorts defended their waves with their fists. They were part of a much larger movement that spread throughout Polynesia. It pushed back against the rise of mass tourism and its accompanying invasion of developers and investors who were destroying the ecosystem. In the mid-1970s, a team of researchers made headlines by studying the history of the oceanic peoples and their traditional navigation techniques. They wanted to prove that the Polynesians were indeed one people. By recreating a migration journey that had previously been considered impossible, they were able to connect Hawaii with Tahiti. Using centuries-old technology, they built a traditional pirogue that could transport around 15 people, livestock and seeds. In 1976, the Hokulea left Hawaii and set sail for Tahiti. After 34 days at sea, the crew of the Hokulea sighted the coast of Tahiti. I was there. There was a huge crowd who wanted to see the arrival of the Hokulea. It was joy. It was an indescribable feeling. Hokulea was a good thing for all Pacific peoples to happen. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the indigenous inhabitants of French Polynesia increasingly returned to their cultural origins and their original name, the Ma'ohi. Surfing also regained cultural relevance. Surfing was that foundation to move us as a cultural, living people, to stay alive. Surfing brought people together. And by the 1980s, it had become clear that there was also money to be made. Lots of money. The commercialization of surfer fashion made it possible to look like a surfer without being one. The industry now turned over several billion dollars a year. Surfing became more and more professionalized. Many surfers were sponsored by brands and were finally able to support themselves through their passion. Welcome back to Huntington Beach, California for the OP Pro. So when we started the Pro Tour in the mid-70s, we were giving out price money of maybe $5,000, which was good. You know, nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't really that much. We would be able to start handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars. And we saw the spark in the surfers' eyes that, hey, I could be a pro surfer and make a living out of just going surfing. And that was the goal. Professional surfing legitimized surfing. It changed from this beach bum attitude that people had about surfers to professional athletes are professional surfers. But commercialization also had its downsides. The sports sexualization was part of the marketing strategy. At big events, bikini competitions took place between rounds of surfing. Female surfers were relegated to filling in during breaks between popcorn and jet ski jumps. The women were always allowed out when there were no or fewer waves or the wind had shifted. They could not present themselves properly, and consequently, there were no spectators. The men had priority. It was like that for many years at competitions. In the late 1980s, some female surfers decided they'd had enough. They had no sponsors and therefore no money for equipment, not to mention earnings. But together, they launched an attack on the male-dominated surfing world. If you look at the first generations who took part in competitions, they didn't really have a say. They had to make themselves heard and say, we're not men, we're women, and we surf too. Among them was Lisa Anderson, who became an icon for an entire generation. Lisa was the embodiment of women's surfing. She was a rebel, a little hardcore and wild. She wasn't afraid of anything, as she'd had a difficult childhood. In the early 1990s, Lisa was unstoppable. She brought women's surfing more credibility. The sponsors were wild for her. Lisa Anderson was in high demand. Lisa, for sure, was the best surfer of all time in her deal. And she got in the design department with Quicksilver, and she started going like, I want to surf in a bikini, I want a girl's short. That I can surf them, that has good attachment and it's solid, but still looks good on a girl, you know? So she got in the design department and started making surfing shorts for women. We brought out board shorts for women. They were a great success. So we knew we were on to something. The first line of women's gear was nearly ready when the Australian boss of Quicksilver insisted on launching the collection under a different brand, named after his daughter, Roxy. It was all the same to Lisa Anderson. She was determined to make the brand a success, no matter what. In 1995, Lisa was featured on the cover of Surfer. This made her the first woman ever to appear on the cover of a surfing magazine. It said, Lisa can surf better than you. Which meant that Lisa could surf better than any boy. That was great, very radical and absolutely right. Everyone applauded because it was a real change. Around the same time, there was another revolution in surfing. A stylistic revolution, characterized by a seemingly endless succession of tricks and rapid turns, as well as by tremendous technical precision. This revolution did not originate in Waikiki or Malibu, but in a US suburb in the early 90s. This video has been seen countless times and is cult among surfers. The momentum generation, as they were soon called, approached surfing in a completely new way. Their goal was to stay on the wave as long as possible in order to perform as many tricks as possible. Surfing legend Kelly Slater was among them. They grow up in little teeny waves like in Cocoa Beach in Florida, and a lot of really good surfers have come from really bad conditions. And I think what it does, it just makes your reflexes so sharp and quick that when you get into a wave with more face like Hawaii, it's easy because you have time. I think about it all the time. Surfing occupies 100% of my time. I mean, when I'm eating, I'm thinking about surfing. When I'm sleeping, I'm dreaming about it, you know. And that's the way you got to be. You got to be totally dedicated. And your whole life has to revolve around it if you want to be real serious. A big part of doing different maneuvers is visualizing. When you're watching waves, just imagine what you could do on the wave. His maturity in his lines and the way he approached the wave and his carving and his technical ability was really sophisticated. Challenging conventions with new tricks. These tricks were made possible by a new development in surfboard design, three fins on the tail. Finally, the scoring system for competitions was modernized. The jury now evaluated the performance of surfers who dealed it out on the same waves in a new way. Flow of the ride, variety of maneuvers, degree of difficulty, quality of the wave. A scoring system was developed similar to that used in figure skating. Kelly Slater was unbeatable in those years. He won the world championships five times in a row in 1994, 95, 96, 97 and 98. Kelly is a legend. There's no one like him. He is simply the boss. Now over 50, Kelly Slater has 11 world championship titles to his name. He still competes with the best surfers in the world in selected competitions. There'll never be another one like Kelly. Professional surfing has established itself and surfing as a popular sport has conquered the world. But some purists prefer to stay away from competition. Laird Hamilton has taken it upon himself to revive the spirit of big wave surfing. I just looked at the landscape and I thought, okay, here's the ocean, here's surfing, here's everybody. I've seen every kind of different surfing there is. I've watched surfing develop with equipment. I've watched the places develop. What am I interested in? What is the thing that interests me? The thing that made sense to me was just do what no one else can do. Laird Hamilton grew up on the North Shore among the huge waves of Waimea Bay. Laird was a great athlete. He wanted to surf huge waves. He had seen his father and his friends do it. But at some point you reach your physical limit. The higher the swell, the faster you have to paddle. And human strength is limited. He realized that he needed propulsion. He and his buddy Buzzy Kerbox bought a Zodiac boat. This allowed them to go faster than the waves. That's how tow-in surfing was born. One morning in February 1993, photographer Sylvain Cazeneuve documented the new surfing technique from the air of Hawaii. The dinghy was three kilometers away from the main boat. And then we saw a gigantic swell coming up. Through trial and error, the new method took several months to perfect. An inflatable boat pulled Laird Hamilton to the top of the huge wave. Once at the edge of the break, Hamilton released the rope connecting him to the boat and plunged into the unknown. Being towed onto a wave and then letting go and feeling the wave pick you up. And as soon as it left the ground and you were flying, it had that feeling you were just, you were set free. It freed me from the chains of surfing. And so when you have this evolution that all of a sudden opens up the potential for new breaks, then it just, it makes the whole world a bigger world. Following the example of Laird Hamilton, tow-in surfers follow storms and waves all over the world. More than ever, it's the elements that call the shots and set the pace in the lives of this new breed of surfers. Justine Dupont was a longboard world champion who decided to devote herself entirely to big wave surfing. Since then, her life has been dictated by the weather. She is one of the few female wave chasers. You know you're going after a wave that you might never be able to surf again. You think this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, a unique day in your life. That's the special thing about big wave surfing that I love so much, the search. Around 2010, a new wave appeared on the big wave surfer's map, the Nazaré wave in Portugal. On stormy days, it can reach a height of up to 30 metres. At the bottom of the ocean, the Nazaré gorge stretches for hundreds of kilometres and drops almost 5,000 metres into the depths. This geological feature can generate huge waves that crash onto the coast with a deafening noise. Spectators stand high up, as if in an arena, and wait. Those who face the Nazaré wave are prepared for the worst. Every big wave surfer must have a team of helpers with them, because a wrong move can be fatal. There are many casualties. On the day when the big waves arrive, I usually wake up at 4 am. The whole team is there by 5. We get ready, radios are handed out, the site plan is drawn up. We go through all the positions again. I get the team very close together. Everyone swears once again that we're there for each other. Sebastian Steutner holds the world record for the highest wave ever surfed. At more than 26 metres, it was as high as a 10-storey building. I like to get out on the water a bit before sunrise. It's still very dark, and then you can only see the silhouettes of the waves coming in. And the further out they are, the bigger the waves are. I can roughly judge the power of the wave by its colour. The darker the wave is, the more powerful it is. Everything that happens after that is intuitive. That's one of the best moments for me. I position myself on the wave, which means I have an overview of the wave. First of all, the view and the feeling, the speed, you can't describe it. It's just you and the wave. You let go of the rope and all your senses light up, come alive. You feel the wave rising behind you, you can feel it. You also see the shadow coming. You say to yourself, this is it, it's very close. There's the impact, the lip breaks behind you, you're caressed by the wave. OK, time to get out of here. With the world record wave, I understood we've come to the end of the line with our development and our knowledge of what's possible, like board design and construction. Like Tom Blake and Laird Hamilton before him, Sebastian Steutner is looking for ways to improve his equipment. Here, he uses a wind tunnel to increase his speed. And this is Kelly Slater, who has created an artificial wave park so that he can surf endlessly on perfect waves. But one crucial element remains the same. Celebrating the sea, as the inhabitants of Oceania did long ago. Plunging into the ocean waves to test human bravery and fragility in the face of the elements. Today, millions of people around the world love to surf. They are keeping the sacred spirit of surfing alive. And I hope that the younger generations don't forget to dance. The hula, the ballet, whatever it is, it's the grace. Don't ever forget that dance. And always smile. It's a happy thing.