The best surf film of the year will be making its big screen debut this Friday at the
Aero Theater in Santa Monica. If you weren't one of the lucky ones to screen the film at one of the several film festivals this year than take this opportunity to watch the brilliance of Splinters on the big screen. Apparently I'm not the only one who believes the film is worth watching, just read the list of accolades in 2011.
SURFER Poll Awards 2011 BEST DOCUMENTARY
Hawaii International Film Festival 2011 BEST DOCUMENTARY
London Surf Film Festival 2011 BEST DOCUMENTARY
Newport Beach Film Festival 2011 AUDIENCE AWARD
Tribeca Film Festival 2011 OFFICIAL SELECTION
Film Festival Amsterdam 2011 OFFICIAL SELECTION (International Documentary)It's a special achievement for any director to have their film screen in the movie theaters but for accidental filmmaker Adam Pesce,
Splinters is more than a dream come true, it's his way of merging his passions for surfing, travel and cinema.
In the 1980s, a pilot left behind a surfboard in a remote seaside village in Papua New Guinea, a land known for cargo cults and cannibalism. Twenty years later, the sport of surfing is splintering the community. As culture clash engulfs their village, four local surfers compete in the country's first-ever national surfing titles in the hopes their surfboards will carry them to a better life.
We recently caught up with Pesce as he prepares for the release of his film on the big screen.
Have you always been a surfing fan? Why did you choose to make a film about surfing?I started surfing in high school and it soon became an influential element in my life. When the swell, tide and wind would combine to produce the best surfing conditions social, work or academic obligations would quickly go out the window. Holiday destinations would be based on the proximity to the nearest good break. If I happened to be driving by the ocean when waves were rolling in and I couldn't stop to surf it was tortuous.
What I love about surfing is that it's both athletic and artistic. When you are on a wave it's your canvas for self- expression and you are bound only by your technique and your imagination. The feeling of riding a piece of ocean energy is incandescent. For many, the chase to repeat that feeling becomes a lifelong pursuit and surfing is not considered a sport but something of a religious quest. You become attuned to weather patterns. It requires you to be in sync with the ocean in its myriad moods. Surfing demands strength, balance and grace under pressure. So it's this fantastic combination of disciplines. Kind of like filmmaking.
This film definitely chose me. Splinters emerged as a hybrid of passions of mine: surfing, travel and cinema. All the elements were there and it was nice to be able to feed off the inspiration I get from all of them.
How did the project come together?It consisted of a lot of fits and starts. While daydreaming and thumbing through a surfing magazine I stumbled on the article that really set the project in motion. A remote seaside community in Papua New Guinea had been introduced to surfing and became fanatical about it.
I was curious about why this off the map village was so drawn to the sport. And I also wondered how this counter cultural object of the surfboard might transform the village, for better or for worse.
I made an initial two-month shoestring research trip with some friends in late 2003 through early 2004. I came back with a few beauty shots but no story. I definitely did not have a movie. At a loss about what to do with the footage, I put it away in my closet and sat on it.
In 2006, I heard from Andy, the president of the Papua New Guinea Surfing Association, that the first national surfing championship was in the works. I knew that this event could potentially be the spine to hold a film together and started making preparations to head back to Papua New Guinea.
Unable to find a crew, I ultimately went alone with my cameras, tapes and surfboards. I also made a promise to myself that I would not return until I had a film. Shooting for six out of seven months alone, I came home with hundreds of hours of footage and was sure that this time I had the components of a movie. But with no producer or post-production budget I sat, yet again, on the footage for nearly a year.
Come early 2008, I was introduced by a friend to my amazing producer Perrin. His enthusiasm was palpable and we were working together a few days later. We then had the challenge of financing a rather esoteric documentary during the financial meltdown. After knocking on a lot of doors, in the winter of 2009 we were funded and started editing.
What drew you to Angelus, Ezekiel, Lesley and Susan as the subjects of Splinters?Before I could even begin the "casting" process I had to get a sense of who was who in the village and what the general dynamics were. As a consequence, during my first two months back in the country in 2006 I hardly shot any material. I was living at Steve's house with his family and doing my best just to be a part of daily village life. A critical component of that was learning the lingua franca, Tok Pisin, so that I could understand people and be understood myself.
And of course I was surfing
a lot. Surfing is a passion of mine but it proved a real functional element to the filmmaking process. In the water I got a picture of who had natural talent and who might be a contender in the competition. Out of the water, initially, there was a cultural divide when meeting people. Being surfers first and then Papua New Guinean or American second, made it easier to bridge that gap. Overall, it was a way to be in spirit and in sync with the village.
Steve made an introduction to Angelus and Ezekiel and from there I got to know these two talented but different guys. In both his surfing and his personal life Angelus is pure id. And I was rapt with the way he would let his emotions out in an unfiltered way. He surfs aggressively and is just as brazen out of the water. For all his flaws, I found him an extremely charismatic person. Ezekiel surfs with these elegant, flowing lines that, as a surfer, I was really impressed by. In fact, I often caught myself getting jealous that I couldn't surf as gracefully. He is truly a gentle soul and I admired his overflowing earnestness. Watching him navigate the competition was wild because I could just see him losing his naïveté in the process. And both guys, like leading men in any movie, happen to be handsome and charming.
Getting to know Lesley and Susan was a little more difficult. I spent a month encouraging both of the women to be a part of the film. They expressed sincere interest but would then disappear. And it was back and forth like this for a while. Later I learned it was a result of their families not wanting them to participate. Lesley and Susan were in a tough position because their family felt the women would be breaking social taboos spending all this time with a whiteman.
I was drawn to the Lesley and Susan not only because of the obvious sister rivalry element but because they had divergent outlooks on village life. Putting some of the nasty patriarchal elements off the table for a moment, Susan was comfortable with her role as a village mom. She wasn't resigned to it but took pride in it. I liked that she believed in traditional family life and yet her sister took a contrarian stance. Lesley was always stirring the pot in one way or another. I appreciated her need to go against the grain even though the society's mores were concretely stacked against her.
What were your biggest challenges during filming?I really wanted to do justice to the beauty and complexity of Vanimo Village. I was astounded by the duality: one moment you are seeing children playing with the most heartbreaking purity and innocence, the next, the mother of one of those children is being beaten senseless. Beauty and violence were always sharing a common boundary. It was hard to make sense of these and many other contrasts because they were so extreme and often happening concurrently.
It was the most sublime and tragic place I'd ever been. I often wondered whether I had the capacity and skill set to capture the totality of it because it felt enormously dense and significant. The last thing I wanted to do was shortchange the grandeur of the place, warts and all, because I was a neophyte. I wasn't sure I was the guy for the job.
There is a graphic beating of a woman in the film. Why include that scene? It seems gratuitous in a way.While an extreme manifestation, this was very much a part of my experience living there. Almost every woman I met had an experience with domestic violence. It's so out of control that there are Public Service Announcements that remind you not to beat your mother, your wife or your daughter. It's tragic and absurd.
I disagree that the scene is gratuitous. If the scene is viewed on its own, without context, sure. But given its placement I feel it is strongly tied to the lives of the characters. Susan has direct experience with domestic violence, as does her sister Lesley. Steve witnesses the beating, is shaken and in turn lectures Ezekiel and other boys in his surf club about improving the treatment of women. While we don't see Susan and Lesley's beatings on screen, we can clearly imagine their intensity as a consequence of experiencing this other visceral event. And hopefully we're more caring of them as a result.
It also comes early enough in the film where the audience is still getting a sense of what daily life is like. The scene is a part of that tapestry and sets up the life that surfing provides a reprieve from and, perhaps, might help to change.
What do you think people in Papua New Guinea love about surfing?
I think they love it for the same reasons a surfer anywhere on earth does: it is so damn fun!
What format did you shoot the film on?For the most part, I shot the film on a video camera made by Panasonic called the DVX-100. I also used a Canon XL-1 at some stages. Both cameras are standard definition and completely obsolete now. There's more resolution in the video coming out of a new iPhone. I definitely got a little bogged down in the technology at the time I was researching gear but I ultimately got some advice from filmmaker Hubert Sauper. He said, "You make the film with your brain, not the equipment." That was helpful for me to hear and kept me focused on story and character.
What do you want people to take away from this film? What makes it important?I want to provide the audience a way into a world they wouldn't ordinarily have access to. Hopefully, it's an invitation to have an experience that otherwise might not be available as well. What they take away from that is personal and up to them.
Frankly, it's an arcane subject matter: Papua New Guinean surfers. Really? How is that going to make for a film? On its own it doesn't; that's the veneer. For me, it's not a film about surfing. And it's not even so much a film about Papua New Guinea. What I hope makes it worthwhile is that it's a window and further evidence that
people the world over dream. And maybe those dreams are fragile or even arbitrary. But if from Splinters you can see a part of yourself, your own hopes, in a person from a village at the edge of the world, then that makes me really happy.
Click here for a full list of 2012 Screenings.
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