Presented by First National Bank, the festival will be held from Friday, and culminates in a show on Clifton Fourth Beach, where the screen will be held aloft like a giant jumping castle by a silent electric fan. It stays wind-resistant via
stays fixed to the ground and weighted ballast filled with water.
Top international and local films will be shown indoors (Labia on Orange Street and Brass Bell at Kalk Bay), but the climax is the one-off show at the sheltered beach on 18 December 2004.
Steve Pike, known as Spike from Cape Town-based surf portal and weather service www.wavescape.co.za, said visitors to Australia may have experienced the thrill of watching a film on a similar screen that floats on the ocean beneath the stars in Sydney Harbour.
David Malherbe, Chairman of Backpacker Tourism South Africa, said the Wavescapes Surf Film Festival highlighted South Africa's undervalued potential as a world class tourism and surfing destination. "This festival is the kind of thing that can become unique to Cape Town. You'd expect it in Huntington Beach, California, or Bondi Beach in Sydney. It's a great
opportunity for tourism authorities to expand their offering."
"The festival celebrates the 'Surf-Afrikan' beach culture, and gives South Africans a chance to see top international and local surf films on the big screen again. It's sad that those sepia days of big screen surf films died out, pushed aside by the rise of a mass media cult of video and then DVD. Ironically, this has worked in our favour, because DVD technology makes screening a lot easier," Spike said.
Many of the films are award winning new releases, such as Blue Horizon, which recently won best Reportage Documentary at the prestigious Sports Movies and Television International Festival in Milan, Italy. The festival, organised by the Olympics Sports Committee, is regarded as the most important international festival dedicated to sports television and movies.
The concept for the festival www.wavescapes.co.za follows the popular revival of big screen surf films around the world, sparked by feature-length documentaries like Dog Town and Z Boys, Riding Giants and Step Into Liquid.
Brett Erasmus, Head of Segment Marketing at First National Bank, said their association with the festival tied in neatly with their involvement in surfing through the Billabong Junior Series. "Financial education of our youth is vital and our involvement in the Junior series is thus twofold. The
other aspect is development of young talent and is for this reason that we are sending the top six boys and top girl over to Australia to compete in various surf events."
