H2indO

plays in Celestial Cinema Sunday

plays with Tribute to Elizabeth Banks

(USA, 2012, 76 mins)

Executive Producer: Elyse Lewin, Chuck Patterson
Producer: Elyse Lewin, Chuck Patterson
Screenwriter: Brent Deal
Cinematographer: Brent Deal
Editor: Brent Deal, Elisa Bonora
Featuring: Dave Kalama, Connor Baxter, Chuck Patterson, Slater Trout, Talia Gangini, Dave Boehne, Jamie Mitchell

Not Yet Rated

Not a surf movie, this is a "SUP" movie—Stand-Up Paddling. SUP is a new sport—newly rediscovered, that is—and this footage, fresh from its premiere at the Newport Beach Film Festival, does outstanding work to explain, celebrate, and defend its subject. Defend, yes, because the surf crowd has been known to hoot and shout at paddlers, call them "spoon goons," and try to chase them off the waves. But Dave Kalama, an iconic waterman featured in this story, just shakes his head. "They don't understand the sport. Paddling is a combination of everything I've ever done in the water." In fact, they say SUP is the fastest-growing sport in the world, partly because it's so easy to learn.

The plot of this film: seven great paddlers come together for fourteen days on a boat, each of them testing the range of the sport on the surfbreaks of the Mentawai Islands in Indonesia. (Hence, the title of the movie—"Indo" for the destination.) These epic seven include Kalama, Aussie Jamie Mitchell (nine times world paddleboard champion), Dave Boehne, Chuck Patterson, two extremely likeable sixteen-year-olds named Connor Baxter and Slater Trout, and one intrepid young woman, eighteen-year-old Talia Gangini. Renowned photographer Jason Kenworthy does a lot of the shooting.

The tone is funny, the relationships all boisterous and friendly. Such is the spirit of SUP.

- PW

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