After a dual world premiere in Bali and Portugal, our most extensive European tour to date – spanning Portugal, Spain, Amsterdam, and Ireland – and a growing east coast tour that now stretches from Virginia to Maine, the Save The Waves Film Festival, presented by Parley, will be kicking off its US west coast tour in November.
This year’s selections were curated by a dozen professionals and cultural influencers in the action sports and creative media industries – folks like photographer Chris Burkard, single-fin wizard and eco-activist Leah Dawson, and legendary surf cinematographer Jack McCoy – to create the most entertaining and impactful film program possible from the best new surf and oceanic films produced over the last year.
This year’s program features filmmakers from over nine different countries, producing our most eclectic directorial talent pool ever. These filmmakers explore a range of topics from plastic pollution and the effects of sunscreens on coral reefs, to the monster waves of Nazare and using murals to educate and inspire eco-activism. Regardless of where they are from, or their chosen topic, all of the selected filmmakers share a passion for visual storytelling as well as a passion for the oceanic environment that they focus their lenses on.
The west coast tour will kick off on Thursday 11/2 with our good friends at Poler Laguna, where we’ll start the day off right with a beach cleanup and Firewire board demo at Doheny. The screening will take place at the Poler Laguna shop, right on the Coast Highway, that night, with a VIP and filmmaker reception starting at 5pm, with catering from Bear Flag Fish Co. and live music from Trouble in the Wind. There are some amazing raffle prizes up for grabs at each stop of the tour, including: Firewire surfboards, Patagonia Yulex wetsuits, Escape Campervans rentals, Peak Designs photography gear, Clif Bar prize packs + more.
We are proud to continue running all of our film festival screenings as close to zero-waste as possible, which means we encourage our guests to bring their own reusable mug to use at the bar. If you forget, no worries – for $10 we’ve got you covered with our co-branded stainless steel Klean Kanteen pint cup, and we’ll even throw in your first drink for free. Since ditching plastics at our film festival screenings, we’ve diverted over 5,000 single-use plastic cups from entering our landfills and oceans – now that’s something to raise your glass to!
This year’s west coast tour will stretch from Baja to San Francisco, from November to early December, with more screenings slated for the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, Chile, and Australia in early 2018. For more information about the tour, film selections, and to buy tickets, visit – www.savethewaves.org/filmfest