True Films: Billabong Odyssey * Riding Giants * Step into Liquid

Billabong Odyssey * Riding Giants * Step into Liquid

Sons of The Endless Summer. All three of these recent documentaries are very satisfying overviews of surfing today. Step Into Liquid is actually made by the son of the filmmaker of the original Endless Summer surf fest — the granddaddy of all surf movies and road-trip documentaries. It’s a fun roundup of how surfing has blossomed to become mainstream and recently technologically innovative. It presents some offbeat surfers, like the ones who ride behind oil tankers. Riding Giants, on the other hand, is a quick history of how surfers were seduced by bigger and bigger waves, and delves into the subculture of big wave surfers today. But for my money, the best of the three is Billabong Odyssey, which is the Endless Summer on steroids. The film follows a crack team of big wave surfers as they fly around the world seeking out really HUGE waves (60 plus feet), with the hope of (and prize for) first successfully surfing a 100-foot wave. It is hard to describe how monstrous and punishing these waves are, but with helicopters, water jets, rescue teams, and coast guard boats in support, you get an awesome view of giant wave surfing, and by all accounts a peak human moment. One gets a sense that surfing has just begun.

— KK