GIRLS CAN’T SURF is the inspiring true story of a gaggle of brave feminine surfers within the Eighties who took on the fluro, egotistical, male-dominated skilled browsing world in a combat for inclusion, recognition, and equality. Their efforts turned ladies’s browsing into the multi-billion-dollar business it’s in the present day. This movie by Chris Nelius, this can be a must-watch for any avid surfer male or feminine. Warning… you’ll cry!
“You need to make a movie about it. We actually had been imply to the women again within the 80s”. These phrases, or one thing to that impact was stated by Nick Carroll, treasured surf journalist of over 40 years, ex-editor of Monitor Journal, and massive brother to massive wave charger Tom Carroll. Nick was properly certified to make that commentary as he watched all these years from the sidelines. When recounting these recollections for shut good friend and movie director Christopher Nelius, it obtained the cogs in Chris’s mind turning. “Nicely I higher make a movie about this earlier than another person does!” he instructed the keen crowd on the Sydney State Theatre premiere of Women Can’t Surf, 2 years later.
Initially titled “Aspect Present” or somewhat “Shit Present”, extra aptly put by 7x World Champion Layne Beachley who stood proud alongside Chris on the premiere. That working title quickly turned the extra pointy GIRLS CAN’T SURF… Some extent-of-view that even to this present day, many people ladies discover ourselves defending.
The 5 principal ladies on this movie, South Africa’s Wendy Botha, Western Australia’s Jodie Cooper, Sydney’s Northern Seashores’ Pam Burridge, Bondi Seashore’s Pauline Menczer, and Florida’s Frieda Zamba, I had heard of earlier than, however I didn’t actually totally perceive the context as to why. Embarrassed to say, I used to be fully oblivious to the battle all of them waged properly earlier than I took my ignorantly place within the line-up as a proud feminine surfer. Whereas in the present day’s newer gender browsing battle has been about equality particularly over equal pay and ladies’s massive waves occasions, again within the Eighties, these ladies needed to combat for the easy honour of inclusion. Not to mention sufficient cash to carve a residing from! “If it was that onerous for the fellows [to make a living]” stated filmmaker Chris, “How the hell did the ladies do it?”. Bloody good query!
The women who obtained into pro-surfing within the early Eighties had been just about the identical because the boys. That they had the identical desires, the identical visions however they didn’t have the permission of the surf tradition.”
– Nick Carroll
By means of eyes crammed with effervescent tears, I heard the story of those brave, decided, ratbag group of tomboy surfer ladies. A narrative that Chris and group so eloquently weaved collectively regardless of it actually being a movie about how no one filmed the women back-in-the-day! GIRLS CAN’T SURF does an astounding job of condensing near 40 years of archive footage, previous photographs, information clippings, articles, and straight-talking interviews of clashing personalities and rivalries that to this present day, nonetheless sting open wounds (Lisa Anderson nonetheless has it out of Layne Beachley!). It’s a story as stunning, as it’s awe-inspiring, and thru the diligent ability of the manufacturing group, fortunately it’s being instructed in the present day.
“Aesthetically, a lot comes by within the music and actually simply the archive itself,” says Director Chrs Nelius. “You see early pictures shot on movie, by Hello-8, VHS, early digital video tape, all the best way to current day HD sports activities broadcasting. It’s nearly like a historical past of movie that parallels the development of girls’s browsing itself.”
It was an all too acquainted scene for the ladies again then. Whereas the lads went on lunch break, speaking with their sponsors, and bathing in their very own demigod glory, the ladies had been made to surf on the shittest of waves, within the skimpiest of swimsuits because the ‘facet present’ to the lads’s occasion. Solely to be awarded prize cash a tenth of the lads’s. In 1991, that prize cash was $1.7 Million to the ladies’s $165,000.
“There was no buzz across the ladies’s facet of it. I bear in mind listening to individuals referring to the ladies’s heats like it’s the lunch break. The girl obtained despatched out when the surf isn’t good and when individuals ran as much as get their meals.”
– Professional surfer, Jamie Brisick
Degraded, demeaned, however nonetheless decided, this group of Motley Crew girls banded collectively and fought for his or her proper to exist, to be heard, to have a sponsor, and to someday have a ladies’s surf tour that would afford them a wage, similar to the lads. That combat a lot of them endured for 10+ years on tour. Pam Burridge for 18, Pauline Menzcer for 20 years. Sadly, a poignant reminder of simply how terrible the sooner days had been, the 12 months that Pauline received her World Title in 1993, the ASP didn’t have any cash to even give her a prize. I ponder how a lot cash the ASP awarded to the lads’s 1993 winner Derek Ho…?
…… Pssssst, be part of Nonetheless Stoked in shopping for Pauline a espresso and make her smile all these years later. Donate right here through PayPal.
“I knew Billabong Women was accounting for 50 % of Billabong’s turnover but when it got here to contract negotiation time, they might typically say ‘pay attention, Joel Parkinson sells boardshorts however Layne you don’t promote bikinis, so we’re solely going to pay you a 3rd of the lads’s world champion’”
– Layne Beachley
Intimate, trustworthy, and deeply private, the journey of those ladies strike chords which might be harking back to the identical struggles the women on the tour endure in the present day. Themes of anorexia, despair, and drug abuse are recalled by the early feminine pioneers, reflective of the latest admission by poster-girl surfer-babe Alana Blanchard discussing her personal anorexia, a direct consequence she says, of the stress from sponsors and the business.
Whereas in the present day’s governing browsing physique the WSL awarded equal pay to the ladies in 2019, being an overtly homosexual lady on tour nonetheless comes with concern of dropping sponsors and livelihood. It was overtly homosexual, proud and vocal ladies like Jodie Cooper, Pauline Menzcer, and 12 months’s later a defiant Keala Kennelly, that paved the best way for 2x world champion Tyler Wright to lately discover a new spring in her step and are available out as an overtly bisexual athlete on Australia’s 60 Minutes, but additionally use her platform to combat for LBGTQ rights, and make a stand towards racism. Whereas Tyler absolutely is aware of the plight of the ladies that stood earlier than her, Pam Burridge like myself, wonders if the younger ladies within the lineup in the present day have any inkling of the previous? “You will need to inform our story so all of the younger surfer ladies all over the world have a higher appreciation of how far their sport has come and the sacrifices that had been made by others alongside the best way” says Burridge.
Who is aware of what trendy ladies’s browsing can be like in the present day if surfers Rochelle Ballard, Pauline Menczer, and co. hadn’t collected their contest jerseys on the 1999 Jay Bay contest, to sit down on the water’s edge and refuse to surf within the atrocious situations. Declining to paddle out, they stood collectively united, till the clock ran down. “We knew it was proper. There have been no waves and we shouldn’t be browsing however we had been additionally scared. You had been making a stand but additionally residing with numerous concern of what are they going to do to us. Organisers needed to cancel the warmth. They couldn’t do it with out the ladies. That was a pinnacle level, the place all of us began to grasp, we are able to do one thing now,” says Menczer. And thank goodness they did. With out their combat, there very properly could not have been a ladies’s tour in the present day. THANK YOU.
GIRL’S CAN’T SURF can be launched in Australia and New Zealand on March 11, 2021. There can even be a sequence of Q&A premieres in February throughout Australia and showings within the Open Air cinemas. For more information on dates and to get tickets, please head to the distributer’s web site MadMan Movies to discover a cinema close to you. Sadly there aren’t any plans as of but for Worldwide launch. We are going to let you understand through Nonetheless Stoked social channels as quickly as we hear in any other case.
Say thanks by shopping for 1993 World Champion Pauline Menczer a espresso. That 12 months, the ASP stated they’d no cash to award her for profitable the very best browsing title. Pauline spent 18 years on tour. Be a part of feminine surfers of in the present day, who wish to make her smile, all these years later.
Written by Christopher Nelius | Julie Anne De Ruvo
Producers Michaela Perske | Christopher Nelius
Manufacturing Supervisor Kiki Dillon
Sound by SongZu
Made with help by Display Australia
