Afternoon Of The Earth
There is an iconic surf movie called Morning Of The Earth. It is is made in the early seventies, and shows surfers travelling around the face of the earth, looking for the perfect wave, or, even, a half decent wave. The movie sees these intrepid trailblazers explore such exotic and far-flung places as Bali in Indonesia, undiscovered by the west in those early days, and now, almost fifty years later, flooded and swamped with mass tourism. From a purely antiquarian point of view the movie offers a snapshot of the Indonesian island as it once was, peaceful, quiet, traditional, and providing waves of solitary glory, not yet invaded by a million holiday makers. In some ways the movie is symbolic of the world of surfing in general: those days can be seen as the early morning of surfing, of a waking up to possibilities that seemed endless, and of a venturing out into a future that seemed exciting, boundless and promising. Like so many things since then, that future has shrunken and ...