THE OLD, THE YOUNG, AND THE SEA (Mario Hainzl, Andreas Jaritz 2013 )

I didn’t find time for many documentaries this Santa Barbara Film Festival, but what a delight this one was.  I’ve seen surfing documentaries before, and while I have always enjoyed them, I didn’t expect that this one would be different. But it was.

The Old, the Young, and the Sea is the story of the sea starting from Biarritz in France and exploring the northern coast of Spain and down the coast of Portugal.  The movie was a fantastic collection of interviews.  The movie makers collected hundreds of hours of interviews, selecting a wide variety of interesting people whose passion in life revolved around the sea. There were three old timers who told the story of surfing, and told stories of how the first surf boards came to be in Biarritz, how they fell in love with surfing and became the original surfers. There were stories of young surfers devoting their lives to excel competitively, stories of retired competitive surfers, big wave surfers, and just people who loved to be by the sea. The story included surf board shapers, fisherman, wanderers and all people with a passion for the sea.

The photography was exceptional. Amazing nature photography, oceans and landscapes, interspersed with photos of the towns, the back roads and the people. The music was exceptional, unique and modern, obviously a major effort by the film makers to put music to their film.  Fantastic film and certainly one to watch again.