Riding Giants

USA 2004, 105 minutes
Dir. Stacy Peralta
Rating: [M]
Genres: Documentary, Cult

Aroview: Perhaps the definitive cinematic fan-letter to the sport of surfing, in particular its "big wave" subcult, with the dir. of DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS tracing its origins in Polynesia through the American pioneers of the 1950s to the current wave of hi-tech specialists.

Featuring an impressive array of vintage footage, interviews, and endless slo-mo spectacles of 70-foot giants thundering into oblivion, this evokes the sport's confluence of counter-culture, commercialism, death-defying bravado and cod-mysticism with fluency and ease. Involving a large array of famous names, this particularly focuses on three lynchpin innovators from separate eras: Greg Noll, Jeff Clark and Laird Hamilton.