Ocean Driven
Monday 1 June 2015 A soldout crowd gave a standing ovation after watching the Chris Bertish movie premiere of Ocean Driven at the San Diego Surf Film Festival last week. Spike spoke to him after he landed back in SA.
Not many people can count maverick pioneer of Mavericks Jeff Clarke as a good friend. Not many can say they have won the Mavericks Invitational. A mere handful of guys in fact.
But the odds narrow dramatically when you chuck two other little nuggets of information into the mix. How about the guy who surfed the biggest wave ever surfed in a contest, or the guy who did this after almost drowning on the wave before?
We won't mention various Guiness SUP distance world records, a callup to represented South Africa in Standup Paddleboarding, and the first mullet to ride Dungeons on a SUP?
Yep. That's Chris Bertish. And he's from Cape Town South Africa (spoken in an American drawl). Yeah man!
Fresh from his recent trip to San Diego to launch his film, shot by local Cape Town film company Fixer Films (it was co-produced by Richard Moerdyk and co-directed by Adrian 'Ace' Charles), Bertish was blown away by the response he got.
"It was unreal. I had to go up on stage and introduce our film on stage before a 500 people sold-out audience after the Sonny Miller (the famous surf filmmaker who died last year aged 54) tribute by Tom Curren. Miller is one of my childhood heroes. What a huge honour, just that in itself."
Even Jeff Clarke and his wife flew in to share the experience with Bertish. Chris Bertish is a big deal over in America. Take note South Africans. We are often victims of tall poppy syndrome, when for some twisted reason, we cut down our heroes, trying to bring them to our size.
Four years in the making in the States and in Cape Town, Bertish says it's an "inspirational story of courage, determination and the power of dreams".
Of course, as a motivational and former TedX speaker nowadays, Bertish would say that. Platitudes about human gallantry are his stock-in-trade, but what the cliched hyperbole fails to do is to convey the sheer magnitude of his achievements.
Forget about courage, determination and gooey stuff about dreams, his list of deeds is plain insane.
Cape Town seems to breed mullets with a death wish, or at the least a mental disdain for bodily pain. But most confine their mad exploits to singular pursuits, such as riding giant waves, dangling over a precipice by two fingers, solo sailing around the world or throwing themselves off a mountain wearing a wingsuit. Bertish, on the other hand, boasts an assortment of feats, many of them characterised by words like "first person to", "rode the biggest", and "paddled the furthest" or "longest time".
Bertish was the first guy to paddle into big Jaws (2001). He won the XXL Swell.com Biggest Wave Award in that year too. He was the first person to standup paddle big wave spot Nellscott Reef in Oregan back in 2009 and was the first person to SUP Dungeons in 2010.
What a year that was for Bertish - everyone remembers that mad wave he hooked that gave his film Ocean Driven its describing line: A day that changed big wave surfing. But you may not know that some fairly large obstacles lay in his path as his fate hurtled him towards that moment: after a 36 hour flight, with five hours sleep on a borrowed board (his were lost by the airline), he was mowed down by a 30 foot wall of white water in the final. Woozy and weak, he took a deep breath, paddled back out and won the Mavericks Big Wave Invitational on a wave most describe as the biggest wave ever ridden in a surf contest.
In 2010, he also got a 2nd in the Nellscott Big Wave event, became the first person to SUP Dungeons, and a little known but off-the-wall nugget: he became the first person to surf Seal Island. You will know the island from the breaching white sharks you see on natural history videos. Yes. I know.
He holds the Guinness World Open Ocean SUP 12-hour Record (130.10km) and has won the Nightjar People’s Choice “Adventurer of the Year Award”. He paddled 325km up the West Coast of SA on an unassisted SUP, enduring sunburned eyeballs and other afflictions, and holds the English Channel World SUP Record of 5:26:03.
Should be enough for a feature length movie? According to Bertish, the film has raw footage from as far back as the 50s, with 8mm footage mixed in with HD, and was "looking forward to screening it in Cape Town at the end of the year at the Wavescape Festival".
Bertish would probably outlast the Duracell bunny. Not all people from Slaapstad are always dossing.
{vimeo}70641312{/vimeo}
About the Film (PR)
Among Cape Town surfers, Chris Bertish was a local legend - to the international surf legends of America's west coast, he was the crazy guy from South Africa with the ridiculously short board who had guts, a broad smile and a death wish to go for anything.
Ocean Driven is a documentary film about one man's passion for the ocean, riding big waves, and how his courage, determination, focus and belief in himself and a never faltering belief in his dream, helped him rise to the very top of the international big wave scene and then beat the odds and the world’s best, on a day that redefined the sport of big wave surfing forever. With commentary from Kelly Slater, Greg Long, Mark Healy, Clark Abbey, Gary Linden, Carlos Burle and more, this inspiring story of one humble man's journey to big wave stardom, will redefine the way you reach for your own dreams, be they on land or in the water.
The film is made in collaboration with Aurelia Productions in America and Fixer Films in South Africa, with assistance from the NFVF-National Film & Video Foundation.