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Angles
Volume 3 Numbers 3&4
Ann Arbor Film Festival
By Julie Subrin
In 1963, the Ann Arbor Film Festival established itself as the first
venue, outside of New York City, art circles for 16mm independent and
experimental films to make their way to the public. The festival quickly
gained a reputation for showing outrageous and non-conventional work
to its unruly fans.
Today, as “independent film” gains popularity with festivals
across the country and films such as The English Patient are hailed
as independent blockbuster, it is important to pay attention to differences
within this broad category of “independent film,” and, in
particular, to question if and how a given “independent film”
poses a challenge to the dominant narratives of mainstream film and
to other media. These questions were on my mind as I took in the 35th
Ann Arbor Film Festival.
There are two types of film which I have come to associate with the
festival (though of course many films in the festival fit neither category):
wacky, abstract, bewildering “experimental,” and well-meaning,
socially concerned documentaries. While these two Ann Arbor stapes may
appear to be quite dissimilar, they do have one thing in common. Each
offers a clear alternative to commercial uses of cinema.
Those who make abstract experimentals are refusing film’s established
function as a story-telling medium, while the documentary filmmakers,
prioritizing film content over form, try to bring to the screen issues
ignored or suppressed by the mainstream media.
But there is a third alternative to commercial film which seems to be
gaining prominence at the Ann Arbor Film Festival namely, the ‘experimental
narrative.” Like documentaries, experimental narratives use narrative
structure in telling their story, but then poke holes in the very order
they’ve created. They ask viewers to wrestle with rather than ignore
(like non-narrative experiments) or absorb 9like non-experimental documentaries)
the seemingly seamless cinematic world we know.
In this article I take a closer look at films from the 1997 festival
and examine the relationship of these three kinds of independent film
to conventional cinema.
The Ann Arbor Film Festival has long been associated with the type of
film which was flourishing in the 1960’s avant-garde – that
is, experimental non-narrative films in which the filmmaker seeks to
expand the ways we use film, for example, by scratching directly on
the film stock, exposing it to different chemicals, or editing images
according to color and composition, without regard for narrative.
A number of films, with radically diverse visions, received awards.
Bruce Conner’s Looking for Mushrooms, which won Best Experimental,
is lyrically montaged stream of textures, patterns, gestures and wildflowers
all shot in San Francisco and Mexico. Brien Burrough’s Aquamorpheous
(awarded Jury Award for Technique) jolts between rapid fire black and
white stills showing dead fish in various line ups accompanied by cacophonous
saxophone music, and lulling shots of water accompanied only by the
sounds of its stillness.
I have mixed feelings about films like these. Sometimes I love them.
Looking For Mushrooms in particular is mesmerizingly well-composed.
But the accomplishment of such work seems to be largely in its mastery,
or wholesale rejection (which is kind of “matery” in and of
itself), of the medium. The effect of such a film is usually that the
viewer bears witness to it (with some combination of awe, intimidation
and boredom) rather than engaging it. The film may be powerfully hypnotic,
but as such it assigns its viewer a passive role, one which I quickly
grow weary of.
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I was drawn to films in the festival made by and about women to counter
the effect of these non-narratives, which seem so masculine in their
tendency to talk at rather than with you. In particular, I thought the
“films dealing with womens issues,” a category specifically
targeted by festival’s Isabella Liddell Art Award, would offer
more audience-engaging films.
These three works which shared the Isabella Liddell Art Award this year
were Tina DiFeliciantonio and Jane Wagner’s Two Or Three Things
But Nothing For Sure; Charlotte Lagarde’s Swell and Jan Krawitz’s
In Harm’s Way. All three of these films more or less fall into
the socially concerned category. As such, these films had frustrating
tendencies of their own.
DeFeliciantonio and Wagner are best known for their feature documentary
Girls Like Us, which was awarded Grand Jury Prize at this year’s
Sundance Festival, and shown but not awarded in Ann Arbor. Two or Three
Things But Nothing For Sure is a more modest 11-minute project featuring
novelist/poet/performer Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina). In
the film, Allison speaks her mind and her poems with power and intelligent
irony. But the filmmakers make no attempt to represent Allison’s
“white trash” subject in complicated, non-stereotyped visual
terms. The strength of her words is undermined whenever the directors
try to dramatize them with a hazy, slow-motion sheet-blowing-in-the-wind
aesthetic.
Lagarde’s Swell is an upbeat, high production value 23-minute documentary
about four generations of kick-ass long-board surfer girls and women
in Santa Cruz, Calif. The film takes a serious turn, however, when we
learn that one of the film’s subjects, teenage surfer Beth Pitts,
died in a surfing accident during the making of the film. This turn
of events opens up the possibility for a more self-reflexive film that
acknowledges the relationship between the filmmaker and her subject.
Instead, Lagarde smoothly incorporates Beth’s death into the film
as if it was in the script all along. As a result, the feel-good film
is forced to be more serious than it set out to be, and the death cannot
help but throw Swell off balance.
In In Harm’s Way, Jan Krawtiz revisits mass media images and messages
of her childhood which warn of, and prescribe protections against, life’s
dangers. Krawitz uses this footage as a point of departure to examine
her devastating and numbing encounter with random sexual violence as
an adult. Krawitz’s film departs from the documentaries described
above because it offers as many questions as answers, because it disrupts
the conventions of documentary film by using the filmmaker as subject,
and because archival footage serves not as evidence of “reality”
but rather as a means of reflecting on the ways world has been represented
to us. Still Krawtiz cannot entirely escape the logic of conventional
narrative; her spoken narration often over-directs our engagement with
the film. She doesn’t seem to trust that her images, or her audience,
will do their work.
These three films take widely varying approaches to the documentary
genre. But they share an unquestioning commitment to conventional film
narrative by keeping relationships between the viewer, filmmaker (Krawtiz’s
film excepted) and story-telling process off screen.
In her 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and narrative Cinema,”
feminist film theorist Laura Mulvy critiques conventional film narratives
for offering viewers “a hermetically sealed world which unwinds
magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience,” and which
invites us to perform a kind of voyeurism by giving “the spectator
an illusion of looking in on a private world.” While one would
hardly call the documentaries I describe voyeuristic, none of them,
including Krawtiz’s, truly disrupt the cinematic world Mulvey describes.
In order to do that, one would have to put the spotlight on film narrative
itself, on the ways a film produces meaning, positions its viewer, and
represents its subject.
That brings me to the experimental narratives which have begun to elbow
their way in among the experimental non-narratives and documentaries
at the festival. These experimental films, perhaps more aptly called
“fictional documentaries” look toward, and then turn upside
down, the narrative conventions. And while they’re not what the
festival is known for, experimental narratives constituted a significant
part of this year’s program, receiving awards in several major
categories.
These experimental fictional documentaries came in all shapes and sizes.
They ranged from Greata Snider’s playful (anti-)road film Portland
(Jury Award for Funniest Film) to Abigail Child’s B/Side (Award
for Excellence in the Art of Film Editing), which represents an imagined
and perplexing entry…
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LongBoard
Magazine
Short takes
Swell, a classy little video from filmmaker Charlotte Lagarde, is particularly
applicable to the teenage girls out there interested in surfing, focusing
as it does on female sliders in the Santa Cruz area. Cool capsule interviews
with women surfers on the “whys” of it all. Guys’ll dig
it too, as healthy stoke is all over this thing. Call (213)227-6604
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San
Jose Mercury News
Thursday, October 24, 1996
“Swell” takes women’s-eye viewShort film views surfing
through women’s eyesTHE SHORT film “Swell,” being shown
Sunday at Stanford University, began more than a year ago as the story
of four generations of women surfers in Santa Cruz. What film-maker
Charlotte Lagarde couldn’t possibly have known when she began her
project was the heart-stopping turn it would take.
Lagarde, 27, began filming “Swell” a beautifully intelligent
and poignant little 23-minute film, more than a year ago, as her master’s
thesis project for Stanford University’s Department of Communications.
Born in a small town in the French Alps, Lagarde was raised there and
in the United States, attending Pitzer College then working in film
and theater, which took her to Southern California. It was there that
she became familiar with surfing.
A windsurfer, Legarde spend a lot of time at the beach, where she observed
the Southern California surf culture. And she didn’t care much
for what she saw. In many ways, it seemed to mirror the media’s
distorted slant on the sport.
“I was looking at a surfing magazine and there was not one woman
surfing but all of these awful ads” of women in thong bikinis and
such, says Lagarde.
Her perceptions of surfers changed, she says, when – while visiting
a friend in the hospital in the East Bay – she met a nurse who
lived and surfed in Santa Cruz. Robin Janizeufski, known affectionately
to all as “Zeuf”, is a breast cancer survivor and the subject
of LaGarde’s first film. “Zeuf” (1994), which has been
aired on PBS, won second prize for documentaries at the University Film
and Video Association Festival and the director’s choice award
at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival.
At first, what would become “Swell” was going to be a history
of women surfing. But that changed when Zeuf introduced Lagarde to Jane
“Jane of the Lane” McKenzie, 40, one of the first women to
earn respect and a place in the lineup at Steamer Lane. I
was immediately taken by this very wise woman,” says Lagarde. “She’s
very practical, but she’s very spiritual as well.” McKenzie
then introduced Lagarde to Rosemari Reimers Rice, 58, who introduced
her to Beth (19), Miranda (17) and Pam (15) Pitts. The Pitt sisters
in turn introduced Lagarde to Gena Bergstrom, a 9-year-old beginning
surfer.
Here, Legarde realized, was the spiritual and generational continuity
she was looking for. “Swell”
begins with a wetsuited McKenzie kneeling on the beach, explaining wave
physics as she draws in the sand. Gradually, through their words and
their surfing, one learns not only about these women, but about some
very fundamental truths of surfing. “When
I go in the water, I feel like I did when I was 15,” says Rice,
who has been surfing since she was 14, when her now-husband – Santa
Cruz shaper Johnny Rice – shaped her first board, a balsa board
with her name emblazoned in yellow on the nose. “It’s one
of the best natural highs you can ever have.”
Rice then leads the camera into her husbands shaping room, where Miranda
is apprenticing as a shaper – an art that relatively few women
have sought to learn. In the next few minutes Miranda and her sisters
talk about their relationship to surfing – and to one another.
“I’m not as good as they are,” says Pam, the youngest.
“I just look at it as something to do when you’re bored, to
keep you out of the house and watching TV.”
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“We’ve surfed here for so many years,” says Beth as the
three sisters carry their boards toward the cliffs above Cowell Beach,
“and we still go out all together as a family.”
Young Gena – who wants to be an actress and a singer and a surfer,
and has the natural ability to be all three – is part of the sisters’
extended family. “Beth
watched me grow up and next year I’m going to be going into junior
life-guards where Beth was an instructor),” says Gena. “I
know that for sure.”
But Gena never went into junior lifeguards with Beth, and Beth no longer
surfs with her sisters. Beth died just days after Thanksgiving last
year, while surfing in negligible waves at Steamer Lane. “It
just completely changed everything,” says Lagarde, who, like anyone
who knew Beth, still mourns her death. “There was no way I could
go on as if nothing had happened. It completely rocked the community,
and me as a person.”
Although she had signed releases that would have legally protected her,
Lagarde wrote to the family requesting their approval to proceed with
the film. For
two months, while the family struggled with its grief, Lagarde considered
the possibility that she’d have to start her thesis project over
from scratch. Finally,
the family consented to the film, with the understanding that Beth’s
death wouldn’t be the focus of the film, only a part of it.
When Lagarde began filming “Swell,” she wanted to tell the
stories of these women and their connection to surfing, to each other,
to their community. As “Swell” concludes, with hundreds of
surfers and friends paddling out to Cowell Beach to form a human circle
in Beth’s memory, the story tells itself”.
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Surfer
Annual Collectors Issue
Swell by Charlotte Lagarde
Rated: COS for Chicks on Sticks
By: Ben marcus
In 221 words: Been up to Santa Cruz lately? There are a lot of female
surfers up there. A lot of them. Swell is a documentary on the women
surfers of Santa Cruz, produced by lagarde for her mater’s thesis.
Lagarde examines how women of all ages are getting over their fear of
the ocean, and how surfing can be a lifelong thing to keep a girl healthy
and happy from her teens to her 50s. Swell introduces a potential future
world champion in n9-year old Gena Bergstrom, who takes her first steps
at Cowells and chats madly about charging Steamer Lane someday. There
are the Pitts sisters – Pam Miranda and Beth – talking about
the fun they’ve had surfing together. There’s Jane Mackenzie,
a professional woman in her 40s who has learned to bend her job around
tide and swell. And there’s Rosemari Reimers-Rice, out surfing
frigid Steamer Lane in her 50s and going strong. Tragically, Beth Pitts,
one of the young women featured in Swell, died while surfing the Lane
a few years ago and this video shows the ceremony at Cowells, and how
the women of Santa Cruz death with the death of one of their sisters.
With nice titles and a jazz soundtrack, Swell is a bitter-sweet film
that deals honestly with the pluses and minuses of women in the water.
Surf Video Award contenders: Best Documentary
Soundtrack: Some nice jazz.
Price: $23
How to get a copy: (415) 826-8820
Should you get a copy? If you’re a girl thinking about getting
into it, there’s plenty of inspiration in Swell.
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Surfers
Journal
Video Verity
Swell by Charlotte Lagarde
23 minutes
Available for $23 from Charlotte Lagarde, Swell Cinema, 253 Randall
Street #1 San Francisco, CA 94131 (415)826-8820
Swell is Lagarde’s maters thesis project for Stanford University’s
Communications School. Born in a small town in the French Alps, Charlotte
was raised there and the States, where she attended Pitzer College,
then worked in film and theater, eventually moving to Southern California
and encountering the surf culture. While visiting a friend in the Bay
area she met a nurse/surfer/breast cancer survivor who became the subject
of her first film, an award winning 1994 short subject entitled, Zeuf.
Lagarde initially envisioned Swell as a history of women’s surfing,
but as she became familiar with a number of women surfers in the Santa
Cruz area, the project evolved into a more focused study of the inter-relationships
between those surfers, the act of riding waves and the community around
them. In the process, Swell became a sensitive and artful inspection
of people who surf rather than of waves ridden, with a stunning real-life
ending that will leave you moved.
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SPUC
Santa Cruz
The Fish Rap Live!
Volume 7 Issue 7Santa Cruz on Celluloid
Festival Features S.C. Related Flcks
By Tyson McCreary, Staff Writer
If you thought Santa Cruz only makes into the news for surfing, ceramics,
smoling potor the occasional disaster – well, maybe you’re
right. But there’s several independent movies soon to be shown
at the San Jose Film Festival that have more than casual connections
to this here city. And only one is about surfing.
Swell, a film by Charlotte Lagarde, is a documentary about female surfers
in Santa Cruz. But the film is just as much about generations as geners,
from a 58-year-old veteran to a nine-year-old newcomer.
It’s tempting to wax poetic about riding the waves as some sort
of grand metaphor, but really, it just looks like a lotta fun.
“I started doing research in Southern California,” lagarde
said, “and realized that I liked the community in Santa Cruz better…I
was trying to break the stereo-types of the surfing community, and one
of them is that you only surf in warm water. Here in Santa Cruz, it’s
cold water pretty much all year long – and people are surfing all
year long.”
Although the film is a paean to joy, the death of local surfer Beth
Pitts, last winter, is a major part of the picture. It is handled gracefully
and poetically. “It was a hard experience,” Lagarde explains,
“and that’s part of doing documentary work. You’re documenting
life – and therefore, death, when it happens. So it was hard –
and very wonderful, the way the community came together.” The 27-minute
running time leaves one looking for more, looking toward the water.
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Wahine
Magazine Vol. 3 No. 1
Wahine’s occasional video recommendation to other wahines.
By Deb Hopewell
This one’s Swell CinemaSwell is the story of four generations of
women surfers in Santa Cruz. A beautifully intelligent and poignant
little 23-minute film, it began as the master’s thesis of film-maker
Charlotte Lagarde, who couldn’t know at the time what a heart-stopping
turn her project would take. Lagarde, 27, began filming Swell more than
a year ago while attending Stanford University. Born in a small town
in the French Alps and raised in Europe and the United States, she attended
Pitzer College after working in film and theater in Southern California,
where she ultimately became familiar with surfing.
A windsurfer herself, Lagarde spent a lot of time at the beach observing
the Southern California surf culture which seemed devoid of female representation
on the waves. Her perceptions of surfers changed, she says, when she
met a nurse who lived and surfed in Santa Cruz. Robin Janizeufski, known
affectionaly to all as “Zeuf,” is a breast cancer survivor
and the subject of Lagarde’s first film “Zeuf” (1994),
which has been aired on PBS, won second prize for documentaries at the
University Film and Video Association Festival and the Director’s
Choice Award at the Black maria Film and Video Festival. At first, what
would become Swell was going to be a history of women’s surfing.
Indeed, a visual highlight of the film is the vintage footage of Linda
Benson hot-dogging it on a longboard – footage Bud Browne literally
snipped from the master copy of his classic Surfing the 50’s. But
the historical concept changed when Zeuf introduced Lagarde to jane
“Jane of the Lane” McKenzie, 40, one of the first women to
earn respect and place in the lineup at Satna Cruz’ Steamer Lane.
“I was immediately taken by this very wise woman,” says Lagarde.
“She’s very practical, but she’s very spiritual as well.”
McKenzie then introduced Lagarde to Rosemari Reimers Rice, 58, who introduced
her to Beth (19), Miranda (17) and Pam (15) Pitts. The Pitt sisters
in turn introduced Lagarde to Gena Bergstrom, a 9-year-old beginning
surfer.
Here, Lagarde realized, was the spiritual and generational continuity
she was looking for. Swell
begins with a wetsuited McKenzie kneeling on the beach, explaining wave
physics as she draws in the sand. Gradually, through their words and
their surfing, one learns not only about these women, but about some
very fundamental truths of surfing. “When I go into the water,
I feel like I did when I was 15,” says Rice, who has been surfing
since she was 14, when shaper Johnny Rice (now her husband) shaped her
first board – a balsa with her name emblazoned in yellow on the
nose. “(Surfing is) one of the best natural highs you can ever
have.”
Rice then leads the camera into her husband’s shaping room, where
Miranda is apprenticing as a shaper – an art that relatively few
women have sought to learn. In the next few minutes Miranda and her
sisters talk about their relationship with surfing – and with one
another.
Back
to top
“We’ve surfed here for so many years,” says Beth as the
three sisters carry their boards toward the cliffs above Cowell Beach,
“and we still go out all together as a family.”
Young Gena – who wants to be an actress and a singer and a surfer
– is part of the sister’ extended family. “Beth
watched me grow up and next year I’m going to be going to junior
lifegards (where Beth was an instructor,” says Gena. “I know
that for sure.” But Gena never went into junior lifeguards with
Beth, and Beth no longer surfs with her sisters. Beth died just days
after Thanksgiving in 1995, while surfing in negligible waves at Steamer
Lane. Lagarde’s film had nt yet been completed.
“It just completely changed everything,” says Lagarde, who
like anyone who knew Beth, still mourns her death. “There was no
way I could go on as if nothing happened. It completely rocked the community,
and me as a person.”
When Lagarde began filming Swell, she wanted to tell the stories of
these women and their connection to surfing, to each other, to their
community. As Swell concludes, with hundreds of surfers and friends
paddling out to Cowell Beach to form a human circle in Beth’s memory,
the story tells itself.
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Women
of Vision Journal
Summer 1997 SeasonJune 25 (Wed) 8 pm
June 28 (Sat) 10 pm
KCSM-TV Channel 60
Charlotte Lagarde
Georgina Corzine
Charlotte Lagarde
Swell by Charlotte Legarde
Color, 1996, TRT 23:00Vision sb.
1. Something which is apparently seen otherwise than by ordinary sight.
(Oxford English Dictionary)
In a filmmaker’s hands vision is a most wonderful tool. It is the
conduit through which a story is told. The clarity of their vision is
what moves us as an audience to fall in love with a film. In Those filmmakers
we find visionaries for whom we sit willingly in the dark, allowing
them to envelope us and hold us rapt with attention watching their stories
unfold. Charlotte Lagarde is a young filmmaker with such vision.
Lagarde, 28, was born in a small village in the French Alps and was
raised in Europe and the United States. She attended Pitzer College
in Southern California receiving her BA in Political Science. She had
a plan for her future and the direction of her life mapped out carefully.
She would graduate from college, move back to France, go to business
school, earn a Master’s Degree in international business and follow
in her executive father’s footsteps.
As it happens with most carefully laid plans, Lagarde’s life took
an unexpected turn when her last semester of her final year of college
she enrolled in an “’Introduction to Video’ class. During
this class Lagarde collaborated with a friend for her final project,
a short film entitled Why Are You Staring At Me?, a look at the way
men look at women and why. The class project in specific changed the
entire perspective of her future and the direction of her life. The
realization that she could combine her creative sense with her personal
and political views was profound. It was also obvious to those who viewed
this first effort that Lagarde had found her passion, as well as her
talent, and it was in film. She decided then and there that she would
learn all she could about filmmaking and try to make it her life’s
work. It was a risk, but one she was determined to take.
She ten set about the task of informing her family of her decision.
Her father flew in from France for what was to be a deeply emotional
conversation. Again, Lagarde’s vision was clear and she received
not only the support of her family but also her first used video camera,
a gift from her father.
Lagarde started her career in film in Los Angeles, working in different
art departments on various films. She did stints as a production assistant,
an assistant art director and the like. She was then given the opportunity
to work on her first documentary, where she apprenticed as an assistant
editor. The film, It Was A Wonderful Life, chronicled the lives of homeless
women. Working on this project clarified Lagarde’s vision of filmmaking.
She realized that what she wanted to do was tell the stories of real
people, document the true drama of their lives and make a difference
within this medium. Thus the decision for Lagarde to make documentaries
was born. The choices were then to either continue apprenticing on films
or to find a school program that focused primarily on documentary filmmaking.
Lagarde was accepted into the two year program in 1994.
Lagarde’s first documentary project at Stanford was a four minute
black and white film entitled Zeuf, an incredibly moving portrait of
Robin ‘Zeuf’ Janizeufski, an emergency, an emergency room
nurse and surfer who survives breast cancer. Zeuf is one of those rare
short films which in the span of mere minutes, the viewer not only feels
that they know the subject intimately, but also fall hopelessly in love
with her; her courage, her strength, her humanity. It is Lagarde’s
vision which allows us to see Zeuf “otherwise than with ordinary
sight”. For her efforts Lagarde’s film has been honored by
being screened at more than fifteen film festivals internationally as
well as on PBS in Chicago and on Showtime’s Sundance Channel. Zeuf
has also garnered the Director’s Award at the Black Maria Film
Festival among others.
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Zeuf not only opened the door for Lagarde professionally but on a personal
level introduced her to a community of women surfers in the Santa Cruz
area who fascinated her. Lagarde noticed a vast difference between this
group of women surfers and how the larger surf culture views women and
surfing. These women were athletes who loved their boards and the ocean
as much as any surfer could. However, in the surf magazines Lagarde
found nothing but photographs and articles about men surfing, with all
the images of women relegated to selling merchandise in thong bikinis.
She started to discuss these issues with the women surfers she was meeting,
having joined the ranks as a surfer herself, and decided that her Master’s
thesis film would be a documentary of this closely knit inter-generational
tribe of women and girls who surf the Santa Cruz coast.
Lagarde titled this film Swell in homage to what takes beneath the ocean’s
waters to create waves for the surfers to ride. We actually learn this
term and it’s meaning in the opening shot of the film. Legendary
surfer Jane “At The Lane Jane” McKenzie, 40, one of the first
women to ever successfully surf the treacherous Steamer lane, kneels
on the beach and methodically explains how it creates waves and what
a surfer needs to do to ride it.
McKenzie’s explanation of the swell is mimetic of what we the audience
experience while watching Swell the film. The way in which a swell builds
from the ocean’s floor and then loops and crashes until it calmly
reaches the beach is very much like the emotional ride we take with
Lagarde through the triumphs and heart-wrenching tragedy contained in
the film.
In McKenzie we find a very wise and dedicated surfer who schedules her
working hours around the tides and swells of each day We also meet Rosemari
Reimers Rice, 58, who has been a surfer since her early teens. Rice,
who met her now husband – Santa Cruz surfboard shaper Johnny Rice
– when he shaped her first balsa surfboard with her name inlaid
in yellow on the nose, still surfs almost daily. In the film Rice introduces
us to Miranda Pitts, 17, one of the three Pitts’ sisters in the
film, who because of her love of surfing, is apprenticing with Rice’s
husband in the art of surfboard shaping. We then Meet Miranda’s
two sisters Beth 19, and Pam 15, who also surf but for very different
reasons. Pam, the youngest, sees surfing as something to do when she’s
bored, an alternative to TV, and a good reason to get out of the house.
Beth, the eldest sister, seems to take surfing, and life in and around
the ocean, much more seriously. She lifeguards, she teaches swimming,
she is the caretaker of her younger sisters interest in the sport. Beth
wears the moniker of role model well. She extends her love of surfing
beyond her family, which we see in her relationship with nine year old
Gena Bergstrom. Gena, the youngest surfer in the film, adores Beth and
states that the “one thing I know for sure” is that Beth is
going to be her instructor at junior lifeguards that summer.
It is at this point in the film that one’s emotions are sent crashing
through the ocean’s floor, as we find out, through the terribly
pained voice of Jane McKenzie, that Beth has died while surfing the
waves at Steamer Lane. We the audience are rocked by the news of this
loss. One can’t help but hear little Gena Berstrom’s assured
statement over and over again in our heads “one thing I know for
sure”… The entire community in Santa Cruz, as well as Lagarde,
mourned Beth’s passing deeply. Lagarde had no idea if she could
even complete the film. She already had the family’s signed releases
for the film but felt that she could not go on with the project unless
she had Beth’s parents approval to proceed. After two months Beth’s
parents contacted Lagarde and agreed that the film had to be completed.
They felt strongly, however, that Beth’s death not be the focus
of the film , but only a part of it. In the film’s closing scenes
Lagarde documents the very moving and beautiful ritual farewell to Beth
in the waters of Cowell Beach. Literally hundreds of surfers, friends
and family paddle out and gather together in a huge circle on their
surfboards, as they are spontaneously moved to splash water as high
as the heavens, as if to reach Beth with the ocean she loved so much.
Lagarde accomplishes with this film what she intended and more. She
chronicles the lives, and one tragic death of the women and girls who
make up this inter-generational family of surfers. Swell, as its name
implies, builds and crashes, moving us to ride out the emotional wave
of the filmmaker’s vision triumphantly.
-Written by Alison AustinThe Swell by Charlotte Lagarde airs on local
PBS on June 25 (Wed) at 8 pm and June 28 (Sat) at 10 pm on KCSM-TV,
Channel 60. It also screens at the Exploratorium 3601 Lyon Street in
San Francisco on July 26, Saturday at 2 pm.
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