Yeah so the Morning of the Earth is almost certainly my favourite surf film of all time and quite possibly the best surf film ever made. It's just so different to other surf films and I actually find it really uplifting.
This film is chilled, the surfing is really stylish single fin surfing and if you open your mind the sound track is intoxicating.
"Morning of the Earth" is an anthropological masterpiece of even greater stature than "Endless Summer".
The Ethos
The Morning of the Earth was filmed back in the early 70's. That was an amazing era in surfing history that saw surfers experimenting with board design and surfing performance like never before.
This experimentation led to surfers expressing themselves in new ways in and out of the water. These guys were leading the way for surfing generations to follow. Living a really cool kind of 'cosmic life' Surfing great waves in a laid back style, shaping boards, smoking bongs, playing guitar, doing yoga and following some pretty strict natural diets.
During the first few minutes of the film Albert Falzon explains he just wanted to make a beautiful film about surfing and the world. He explains that we don’t need all the things that we create for ourselves, money, possessions and material items. It’s all meaningless in reality. Actually all we really need is the air we breathe, the food we eat, shelter, love and of course surfing!!!
Locations
Morning of the Earth is set in Australia near Byron Bay, at Angourie, Lennox Head and Broken Head.
In Bali at Uluwatu and Bingin in Bucket and theres also some footage from Java
In Hawaii, on the North Shore of Oahu. The Hawaii section of the movie includes some unbelievable early footage of Jerry Lopez charging through Pipeline tubes on a single fin with no leg rope!
The pioneers
Stephen Cooney, Terry Fitzgerald, David Treloar, Gerry Lopez, Nat Young, Michael Peterson, Barry Kanaiaupuni, Albert Falzon
The Imagery
There is a lot of trippy imagery throughout the film. Some footage was filmed near the cave at Uluwatu in Bali on infrared film. There are also a few scenes from inside the Halaekalai Volcano Crater on Maui. Albert Falzon used different colour filters on his camera; he also slowed some of the footage down. These techniques help to create a really emotional style of film.
Inspiration
Albert Falzon was inspired by the early Bruce Brown surf films that were coming out of California around the time. Bruce Brown’s ‘The Endless Summer’ ‘Surf Crazy’ and ‘Surfing Hollow Days’ had been major hits in the U.S. Watching these films, helped inspire Albert Falzon to make a film that would appeal equally to an Australian audience.
Prior to Bruce Brown surf movies the only video image we had of surfing was from the old beach movies. These would usually feature some Hollywood sweetie pie who would stand on a surfboard, in front of a blue screen with a flower in her hair, playing the Ukulele while the director splashed her with water...I mean please!
Film as Art
“The flow of a surfer on a wave somehow synchronised with the flow of the celluoid thru the projector. The dynamics of surfing and of film have something in common.
Film, by being able to render surfing in slow motion, revealed aspects of wave motion and the surfer's response to it that could not be perceived by normal vision.
So the surf film-maker became more than a sports film-maker; he became an artist capable of revealing truths about life that we otherwise overlook or take for granted.
Above all others, George Greenough in Innermost Limits of Pure Fun demonstrated the capacity of surf films to become art of a high order. His "Coming of the Dawn" sequence has cosmic implications that film artists working in any genre would be proud of.”
— Albie Thoms
Check out full details at: www.morningoftheearth.net
You can also join Morning of the Earth on Face Book: Here
This blog post and many others at: www.blog.swanseasurfing.com
If you enjoyed Morning of the Earth check out these films too:
Innermost Limits of Pure Fun
Bustin Down the Door
Crystal Voyager
Comments