Wilder than Waikiki

Surfing was invented by an Ulsterman – sort of – and Ireland is one of the last places in the world where the sport still has "soul", according to a stunning new documentary. Director Joel Conroy explains all to DONALD CLARKE.

‘ALOT OF American surfers are still sure that the only good waves are in California or Hawaii,” Joel Conroy tells me. “A few more adventurous surfers went to Ireland and sent these photographs back of these incredible waves, but a lot of those guys still thought: well, they must only get surf like that now and again.”

I must confess that I once felt a bit this way myself. Knowing as much about surfing as I know about sumo wrestling, I assumed that Irish surfers – all seven of them – spent their unhappy afternoons getting steadily more frostbitten in the sort of swells that would struggle to upend a discarded toothpaste cap.

Waveriders, Conroy's tremendous new documentary, puts the record straight in spectacular fashion. The picture finds time to examine how, during the early part of the last century, one George Freeth, son of an Ulsterman, discovered surfing in Hawaii and went on to introduce the activity to California.

The film also talks to more recent Irish-American pioneers such as Kevin Naughton and the Malloy brothers. But it is mostly notable for the spectacular shots of enormous waves careering towards the beaches of Donegal and Clare. Look closely and you will see brave (crazy?) surfers hurtling into the rolling tubes and careering above the flying surf.

“Shooting at the Cliffs of Moher was an adventure,” Conroy says. “But these are world-class surfers, and they were not taking any risks that they wouldn’t be able to deal with. They are under my direction, but they would be doing this anyway. Or would they? That was a moral dilemma. What if somebody croaked it? They all said to me: ‘Forget it. This is what we live for.’ Mind you, we were all still petrified.”

Thin, lithe, with swept-back, greying hair, Conroy, at 35, looks like the sort of outdoorsy fellow you might encounter on a wave, mountain or glacier. He does, however, come from urban stock. Raised in Dublin, he is the son of the late Róisín Conroy, who founded the feminist publishers Attic Press, and he remembers an adolescence spent rubbing shoulders with the artistic elite.

“Yes, my background is in media. I worked with my mother when I was young. I worked in graphic design. I remember hanging out with Nell McCafferty, all the great journalists. I remember Neil Jordan coming in to buy the rights to some book or other. I met all the characters from the art world.”

But he was never tempted to become a writer? “Well, you know, the biggest influence on my life was Dennis Keane, John B Keane’s brother. He was a beautiful character and his main vocation was teaching drama to kids. Twice a week we’d do acting classes with him, and that was inspirational. But being on stage scared the hell out of me. I was more interested in the logistics of performance.”

Forswearing college, Joel headed off to Australia, where he secured a job working for MTV. It was during this time that he learned to surf, but it took a while for his two enthusiasms to come together.

The surfing documentary has long been a popular genre, but most of those films tend to be aimed at the already initiated. Easily accessible pictures by the likes of Stacy Peralta (director of the cracking Riding Giants) are greatly outnumbered by narration-light compilations of blonde men falling off waves. Conroy wanted to make a film that had a solid narrative arc, a film that might appeal to a mass audience.

“I was sitting in an airport reading letters to the editor of a sports column,” he says. “This letter asked if it was true that an Irishman invented surfing. The guy explained that wasn’t quite true, but that an Irishman had rediscovered the sport. I Googled and I found some stuff about George Freeth. There was very little there, but I tracked it down.”

Conroy realised that the Freeth story could work as a spine around which he could construct a history of Irish surfing. He explains, for instance, how Kevin Naughton, an Irish-American surf journalist, travelled from California to South America and onwards to Ireland in search of ever more fearsome waves.

When Joel returned to Ireland, he approached the Irish Film Board and was urged to get himself an experienced producer. Margo Harkin, a respected industry veteran, came on board, but it took a further five years for the film to make it into cinemas.

“It was a long time. I live in Ringsend with my wife, who is from Berlin, and our two children. Both of them were born while we were making this film. My mother died during that time as well. A lot of life took place in that time.”

Happily, Waveridershas gone down extremely well. Screenings at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival – natural home of the surf doc – were sold out, and the picture scooped the audience award at the 2008 Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.

Conroy has the good sense to offer his audiences a truly thrilling finale. The picture ends with footage of an enormous swell near the Cliffs of Moher. How did Conroy – who has no formal training, remember – learn to shoot film at the wrong end of a raging hurricane?

"I did get some access to the best surf cameramen in California, but I just couldn't talk them into coming here. They weren't interested. But I did get in touch with this guy from the BBC in Bristol – the guys who made Blue Planetand so on – and he helped us build a special housing for the cameras. We needed to shoot in extreme slow motion, and we ended up using the same film cameras they use for filming crash test dummies and the effect of G-forces on jet fighter pilots."

Seawater had a way of working its way through the protective layers and making mischief with the equipment. Conroy remembers one worrying incident. “We had to rush back and throw all the equipment in a lukewarm bath and then we got into the bath as well. Then we got the hairdryer out. Eventually we got it all working again.”

As well as being a spectacular demonstration of the skill and courage required to surf the biggest waves, Waveridersdoes a good job of summarising the semi-mystical philosophy that drives adherents of this peculiar pastime. While competitive surfers in California and Australia indulge in product endorsements and otherwise facilitate the commercialisation of the sport, a less conventional class of waverider travels the world looking for the most isolated beach with the biggest, scariest waves.

Ireland is still a welcoming spot for these “soul surfers.” “I think so,” Conroy says. “The sport is growing at a massive rate here. But we are now still at the stage California was at in, maybe, the 1940s or 1950s.”

Could Waveriderscontribute to the end of the current, freewheeling era in Irish surfing? After all, if too many surfers get to see that epic final sequence, shot in a secluded rocky cove in Co Clare, then they may rush there in multitudes and turn the area into a windier Waikiki.

Conroy laughs.

“You’ll see that I was very cautious not to draw a map and show the audience how to get there. The film is about a culture, not about a locale. We do feature the Cliffs of Moher, but I bet you any money that if you go there and try and find that spot, you’ll fail. You have to walk across two fields and down a path, then get on a jet ski. The average person is never going to find it.”

I’ll take his word for it.

Waveridersopens today.