Filmmakers returning to reveal results of longboard film shoot

TWENTY months after they were shooting in Gisborne, a team of film-makers will soon release the result of their endeavours
. . . a work documenting the art of longboarding and the culture that surrounds it.
In early 2010, Wellington filmmaker Nicolas Brikke and production manager Kirsten Berrett spent five months in Gisborne to record footage for the “East” section of their feature-length documentary, SEWN (South-East-West-North).
And in January they will be back, holding the Gisborne premiere at the city-centre Dome Cinema (January 26), followed the next day by a “dairy-style block party” and “locals” screening at the Wainui Store.
It will be part of a 26-date screening tour designed to take the film back to the communities that supported it and participated in its making.
When in town for the shoot Brikke said that, for him, Gisborne veteran longboarder Ian “Moti” Proctor’s character and presence “encapsulates the Polynesian spirit of surfing”.
“He is from an iwi (Ngati Uepohatu) that has strong links to water sports and he brings a real spiritual depth to longboarding.”
That was why he chose Proctor to be one of the central figures of SEWN, an exploration of the shores of Aotearoa as seen through the eyes of longboarders.
But although Brikke timed his visit to Gisborne to coincide with the 2010 Makorori First Light Longboard Classic, competition surfing was not his focus.
“It is more a look at the culture of it,” he said. “The focus is on longboarding as ‘soul surfing’, about the flow of the sport. Standing on the nose of a board is really
the closest thing you can get to walking on water and there are a lot of subtle essences I want to explore.”
Even so, the East Coast portion of the film also features fellow Gisborne longboarder James Tanner, who won the open division of that year’s Longboard Classic, reclaiming the title he first won in 2009.
Brikke is himself an experienced longboarder, having been rated No. 13 on the European circuit and, rumour has it, nearly disrupting the narrative flow of his own film by competing in the 2010 Longboard Classic and nearly snatching the open men’s prize from Tanner’s grasp.
It is a sport he says represents an effective marriage of science and the arts, something he is exploring through the making of SEWN and through the graduate film studies he was working on at the time of shooting.
“Surfboard design is all about hydrodynamics and understanding how that works is a bit of a mystery . . . kind of like a dark science,” he says. “But the board can also be seen as a platform . . . almost like a dance floor. The art comes in learning how to challenge those hydrodynamic theories so longboarding can be used as a form of creative expression.”
With the post-production of SEWN now complete, he and Berrett were “stoked about the result” and were looking forward to taking it back to the coastal communities that informed it.