Series Site
CinemaSF, Tunnel Records and Mollusk Surf Shop Presents:
THE FIRST ANNUAL OCEAN BEACH SURF FILM FESTIVAL
Friday September 13 through Sunday September 15
At the Historic Balboa Theater, 3630 Balboa St, SF 94121
Sponsored by Connie Chan’s District 1 Office and Another Planet Entertainment
TICKETS at balboamovies.com
THE FIRST ANNUAL OCEAN BEACH SURF FILM FESTIVAL celebrates the San Francisco surf scene, combining a mix of classic and modern surf films with live music and a healthy dose of local surf history for three days and nights at the Historic Balboa Theater, just blocks away from where it all began…
San Francisco’s Richmond District has been the home of the City’s surf scene since Kelly’s Cove first became a surf spot in the late 1940s. One Kelly's bodysurfer, Jack O'Neill, opened a surf shop at the beach in 1952, and developed the first commercially available wetsuit in response to the frigid water of Ocean Beach. Kelly's Cove visitors reflected and developed a California surfing ethos with roots in Polynesian culture as well as alternative and counterculture movements developing in postwar San Francisco. Elements of Eastern religions, conservation, and a soulful connection to nature, associated now with poets and writers such as Gary Snyder and Michael McClure, were present in wave rider philosophies espoused and nurtured by many at Kelly's Cove. This athletic spiritualism at Kelly's seemed to evolve as a nature-focused counterpoint to San Francisco's Beat and Summer of Love scenes in the 1950s and 1960s. For a time, the Family Dog called The Great Highway home, and the rock n roll scene intertwined with the surf scene to create a unique and magical melding of the minds.
As time and surfing progressed, many more breaks along Ocean Beach were found and today the local surf culture is thriving up and down Ocean Beach. Hundreds of surfers can be seen in the water on any given day, and local surf culture has been passed down from generation to generation just as the surf shop baton has been passed from Jack O’Neill’s first surf shop, to Wise Surfboards, to Aqua and Mollusk Surf Shops and beyond.