Remove ImagesPicks of the Week
Drive-In Surfing
Saturday (Oct. 7), 6 p.m. at Maui Community College
October 05, 2006
[DRIVE-IN MOVIES] Think of the surf film The Far Shore—playing at the Maui Fest Drive-In this week—as The Endless Summer
with political context: a few discussions of Nixonian foreign policy,
local poverty and the ethics of publicizing hidden surf spots, all
mixed in with grainy Super-8 footage of surfers and hippie bikini
girls.
Filmed a few years after The Endless Summer but only released in 2003, The Far Shore—directed
by Greg Schell—follows the decade-long adventures of Kevin Naughton and
Craig Peterson, who were 18 and 16 respectively when they began
traveling and filming in 1972 throughout Central America, Africa,
Europe and the South Pacific. Peterson, still in high school, was also
a staff photographer for Surfer magazine.
Where The Endless Summer depicted an endless series of sun-drenched, happy adventures, The Far Shore
is grittier. During their 1972 trip to Mexico, for instance, the guys
ran into President Nixon's Operation Intercept, in which heavy-handed
drug-hunters roughed up suspects at the border. The film also explores
how Surfer's editor once
received death threats from locals infuriated by one of the filmmaker's
articles exposing a local secret spot—a common occurrence movies like Endless Summer never touched on.
The Far Shore screens at the Drive-In with Akeelah and the Bee and Wind and Wives: The Life of Woody Brown. Tickets cost $20 per car, $40 for VIP parking and keiki under 10 are free. Call 573-5530 for more info. [ANTHONY PIGNATARO]