Article published Nov 1, 2007
StarNewsOnline.com - Star-News - Wilmington, NC
Amy Hotz: 910-343-2099
amy.hotz@starnewsonline.com
Filmmaker honors local surf history
I've lived three miles from Wrightsville Beach my entire life and didn't touch a surfboard until six years ago. Growing up, I did everything else expected of a beach resident - fished, clammed, boated, sailed, SCUBA dived, you name it. But I was wary of surfing because I didn't fit into that "surf culture." Now, at least, I'm beginning to understand its appeal.
Board Shorts, a documentary of East Coast surfing, allows an unpretentious peek into that little subculture. The film started when Joseph Skipper Funderburg (you might recognize him from his Surfing on the Cape Fear Coast coffee table and deck book) started working at the Cape Fear Surfing Archive at UNCW's Randall Library. He wanted to document his favorite lifestyle's history through interviews, old footage and surf music. But he wanted to do it faster than the state-run university system could allow.
An Internet search led him to Surf 64 Productions, operated by Will Lucas and his wife. "It was nice to find someone as stoked as I am about surfing preservation," Funderberg said. The film spans about 50 years of change in the sport here, but Funderberg says his coverage of the scene in the '60s and '70s fills a big gap in local surf history. Most of the folks interviewed are Funderberg's friends, but they have some good stories to tell.
"This is my third and best project - truly a labor of love - two years in the making," Lucas wrote in an e-mail interview. "I used my own life/surf experiences to formulate the interview questions and scenes. I returned from Vietnam in 1967 and everything had changed … a time of innocence ended."
Indeed, the film includes how the surf pioneers handled being scooped up by the draft during the Vietnam War and how others found religion among the waves. Board Shorts is available at www.surf64.com for $25.95 (free shipping) and at local surf shops. Keep a look out for Funderburg's next surf film about East Coast women surfers scheduled for release next fall.