"___"

"___" is a new surf film by Johnny Abegg and Matty Yeates of Byron Bay, Australia. It's not one of those movies with guys going to technicolour dream waves in exotic surrounding and shredding hard, nor is it one of those ones where someone gets soulful and jets around the world to share the love of surfing with cheerful indigenous locals and ride 'unusual' surfcraft in fantastic waves. It is a more experimental take on it all, "Exploring the fragmented world of a surf culture, through the blurred eyes of a few." as Johnny says. There is great surfing, cool boards and lots of dementia. The protagonists party and surf and do what you do when you're them and not surfing. It comes either with a hand assembled zine or a hand assembled book, and they're on their way from Australia now. Hopefully we'll have some screenings set up over the summer too. If surf movies were jam, "___" would be neither the slick supermarket version loaded with corn syrup and pectin nor the high end organic potage with a cute label and some fancy fruit (probably grown for next to nothing in Chile or China) but the homemade stuff in pickle jars the mad bloke down the road makes out of whatever grows in the neighbourhood, battered though it may be. Jam is good, homemade is good and "___" is good.