“A Charmingly Esoteric Journey Across The World”
The Ocean Film Festival presents a series of nine short films about the ocean and the people who dedicate their lives to it. With films from all across the globe, the festival is an overall positive if occasionally mixed bag of shorts that range from tear-jerking to laugh out loud funny. Together, they make for a delightful short film festival that succeeds in convincing you of the grand importance of our oceans.
After a brief introduction, the festival kicks off in earnest with Astronaut in the Ocean. The film explores the lesser-known, lesser-respected sport of bodyboarding, surfing’s lame younger brother. Despite this, the subject of the film, bodyboarder and construction worker Shane Ackerman, is treated with a great deal of respect and love, and comes across generally as a charming misfit. It briefly touches on Ackerman’s struggles with pursuing such an uncommercial sport and the financial difficulties that come with that, but soon veers out of the overly emotional territory; leaving us with a funny, breezy kind of film that opens the festival on a perfect note.
This is followed by the much less impressive SOULs: Stories of our Underwater Legends. SOULs makes a valiant attempt at getting into the life and work of several ocean experts and explorers, but is unfortunately marred by rather distracting audio issues. The quality of microphones varies wildly between interview subjects and the sound mixing does very little to fix this. It’s also one of the few films in the festival that feels dragged down by its length, never quite managing to reach a real point or conclusion in its short runtime.
Aquaballet comes in next to act as sort of a pallet cleanser. The shortest film in the festival, Aquaballet is a simple and charming display of talent from freediver and underwater dancer Marianne Aventurier. This then leads us into undoubtedly the star of the show, We The Surfers.
Focused on a surf club in the town of Robertsport, Liberia, We The Surfers is certainly the most emotionally impactful film of the festival. The film touches on Liberia’s civil war and extreme poverty, opening on the story of a former child soldier, and lingering on shots of destroyed buildings; but it then focuses us away from these horrors to look instead at the Robertsport surf club. Despite their hardships, the children and young adults of Robertsport find hope, joy, and community in their small surf club sponsored by German charity Provide the Slide. The film treats its subjects with great compassion and care, and never feels like it’s exploiting or talking down to them. We The Surfers leads into the interval, giving the audience time to dry their eyes before returning for the final three films.
The festival picks back up with Orcas in the Arctic. A disappointment similar to SOULs, this time brought down by poor camera work, but with just as little to say.
Thankfully it’s followed by Diving into Darkness, an exploration of world famous cave diver Jill Heinerth. The film gives a quick overview of her life and how she came into her profession, before leading into an honestly edge-of-you-seat recounting of just one of her many near-death experiences cave diving in Antarctica. Jill herself comes across as slightly unhinged but very charismatic, and easily sells the film on her storytelling ability alone. This coupled with some truly mesmerising footage from the late cinematographer Wes Skiles, results in a memorable and thoroughly entertaining film.
The festival is finally closed out by Let Me Live, a portrait of Cornish surfer Tom Lowe. The film is very effectively edited and shot, coming in the end to slightly outshine everyone else by having the snappiest and most professional looking production. Let Me Live acts as the perfect conclusion to the festival, combining the personal grit and charm of Astronaut, the passion of We The Surfers, and the mania of Diving Into Darkness.
After Let Me Live, the festival ends, on a note as fun and charmingly esoteric as the event itself.