First time on Blu-Ray in the UK. Three years after Dogtown and Z-Boys, Stacy Peralta came back with another spectacular doc - this time on the history of big-wave surfing. Widely regarded as one of the best surf documentaries ever made, it can now be viewed in high definition for the first time. Breaking the mold of traditional documentary filmmaking, Riding Giants uses its dynamic, cross-generational approach to profile the lives and times of the intrepid surfers who over the decades have dedicated themselves to finding and successfully challenging the biggest waves on earth. We meet Greg Noll, the pioneer, whose relentless push into Hawaii's big surf in the late 1950s earned him the nickname The Bull. There's Jeff Clark, Northern California's lone frontiersman, who, after discovering the massive waves of Maverick's near San Francisco, rode there alone for over a decade. And finally Hawaii's Laird Hamilton, the prototypical extreme surfer, a rare breed of athlete/innovator considered as the best big wave rider who ever waxed a board.
Riding Giants is more than another blissful surfing movie. It's an outstanding documentary about one era in American alternative lifestyles, when surfing was well-suited to a radical culture of social dropouts. Using an amazing array of amateur film clips, shot for the most part in Hawaii and California from the late 1950s and early '60s, director Stacy Peralta traces the rise of surfing's appeal to young men looking to test themselves in an unorthodox (and sexy) milieu--of "living life to the fullest," as former surfer-turned-screenwriter John Milius (Big Wednesday) puts it at one point. Lengthy chapters on the glories of Oahu's Makaha and the "superstition and dread" that accompanied the big-wave challenge of Waimea Bay are riveting and sometimes heroic, particularly told through the memories of surf legend Greg Noll. Great material, too, about the deadly wonders of surfing Mavericks, California, where the rocks will get one if the violent tides don't. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
Dana Brown takes us from the terrifying monstrous waves of Oahu's North Shore to the Texas waters of the Gulf of Maxico to the shores of Ireland and Rapa Nui. Told through the voices of legends pros and everyday surfers alike this is not just a film for surfers but anyone with an appreciation for sport and an inkling of what it means to be 'stoked'. 'Drop-dead dazzlingly knockout beautiful. This movie will grab you' - Peter Travers : Rolling Stone
Quite simply the mother of all surfing films!
Documentary detailing the origins and history of surf culture.
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