LS/FF 2011: Stoked and Broken!
- The London Surf / Film Festival would like to thank everyone involved with this year’s event and all those who helped make it such an overwhelming success. “The last night of the festival has been and gone and we are feeling stoked, if a little broken,” says Event Director Chris Nelson. “After 10 screenings, including a World Premiere, a huge European Premiere and 8 UK Premieres – all completely sold out, we’re amped to have shared this inaugural event with such a great crew of British surfers. It was awesome to sit in the packed out auditorium at the iconic Riverside Studios every night and enjoy world class films with such a knowledgeable and appreciative audience.” We were honoured that filmmakers such as Keith Malloy, Adam Pesce, Taki Bibelas, Aleksi Raij and Allyn Harper came to be part of the event, whether hosting Q&A’s or watching their films on the big screen for the first time, or partying as only the Finnish can! They also took the chance to meet as many surfers from the UK scene as possible and to talk all things waveriding and moviemaking. Adam Pesce even managed a dawn patrol down to Devon to sneak in a few choice waves before heading back Stateside.
- “We’d really like to take this chance to thank all the sponsors and partners who helped make this event happen,” says Festival Co-founder Demi Taylor. “Our partner for the Shorties Short Film Contest, the National Trust have been incredible to work with. The charity protects huge swathes of our coastline including some of our best surfing beaches. They understood how important it was to us to support UK filmmaking talent and came onboard from day one. The team at Oakley embraced the whole notion of the festival and understood what a creative surf scene the UK supports. They were always as keen as we were to see world class international premieres coming to these shores for the first time. Our media partners Huck, Little White Lies and magicseaweed have done an awesome job spreading the word and keeping everyone up to date with all our news.” Jeremiah Weed Brews was a hit with the hundreds who packed into the bar every evening – the free drink flowed our house band The Wishbones went down a storm. “We want give a special shout out to the guys at Venn Creative who have been amazing to work with,” says Chris. “We gave some some really tight deadlines and they always delivered awesome work, right on time. Our appreciation also goes out to friends Go-Pro and Finisterre, but most of all we’d like to thank everyone who turned up. We put on 10 films and each one was a two hundred seat sell-out with a queue waiting for returns. The audience came from as far as the north of Scotland, South Wales, Cornwall, Yorkshire, the south coast, France – we even had Italian media here. The UK got behind the event 100% and we really appreciate all the support.”
- Also, if you’ve got some great photos from the event, we’d love to see them over on our Facebook page. Post them up on our wall – we’ve got a limited edition festival T-Shirt and some very special posters for the best shots…