Overview
Before our always-on devices and the internet meant that everyone could discover almost anything in seconds, how did anyone know about spectacular surfing spots that weren't in their own backyard, or near enough — and about what people were doing on those waves? When the sport was just becoming popular in Australia in the 50s, taking advantage of the fact that this is indeed a nation girt by sea, how did word of where the best breaks are spread, and the latest techniques? The answer to these questions sits at the heart of Australian documentary You Should Have Been Here Yesterday. To be exact, the solution to sharing tips on where and how to hit the waves provides the bulk of the film. By rustling up 16mm cameras however they could, the era's surfers shot their own footage, then screened the results far and wide to eager crowds. Filmmaker Jolyon Hoff — also a surfer — now splices his latest feature together from such material.
First, he made another surfing-related film — and if it wasn't for 2009's Searching for Michael Petersen, about one of the country's legends of 70s surfing, You Should Have Been Here Yesterday wouldn't exist, either. "It all started with that film. I was a film student when I first started making that film — and Michael Peterson was the ultimate iconic mythological character of 1970s Australian surfing. But when I went to make the film, he was also schizophrenic and whenever he saw a camera or an interview, he couldn't talk to people, he couldn't be around people, he found that very difficult," Hoff tells Concrete Playground.
Steve Otton
"When you're setting out to make a film about someone like that, you've got to find some footage — and you've got to find some surfing footage. You can't show the rubbish stuff because it's the icon, he's this mythological character. So that journey took me to Dick Hoole's garage up behind Byron Bay," Hoff continues. Inside, he went into one of the surf photographer and fellow filmmaker's rooms, which was filled with 16mm films and surfing paraphernalia. "And we found some footage of Michael, but that whole time — and this is what, 2007, maybe 2008? — I was looking around at all these other film reels and thinking 'wow, I wonder what other gold is hidden in those?'. So that's where the kernel of the idea began."
More than a decade and a half later, You Should Have Been Here Yesterday weaves that rediscovered gold into a cinematic poem that takes inspiration from non-surfing docos Moonage Daydream and Mountain. As Bret Morgen's stunning David Bowie tribute and Australian director Jennifer Peedom's ode to towering peaks both are, it's also designed to be as immersive as a movie can be. The best surfing films can't replace the real-life experience, of course, but they can make you yearn to catch waves yourself — or to see them ebb and flow in front of you with the naked eye. They also give non-surfers and surfers alike a close-up look at one of the planet's great joys, and ensure that a quote from Point Break always rings true: "surfing's the source, it'll change your life".
Hamish Ludbrook
Australian lives were changed by surfing, and Australia was as well, as You Should Have Been Here Yesterday explores via its gorgeous restored footage. As clip after clip of waves rolling across the Aussie coastline fills the screen, scratches and other markers of the material's heritage still visible, voices give the imagery context. Morning of the Earth director Albe Falzon, surfer and surfboard shaper Wayne Lynch, 1993 Women's World Champion Pauline Menczer, author Tim Winton and others get talking. The documentary covers how jumping on a board became the nation's new youth culture, the response to the filmed material at the time, how surfing connected the land Down Under to the world, the sport's local commercialisation, the reaction to women riding the waves and more.
You can also see You Should Have Been Here Yesterday as compiling examples of behaviour that's oh-so-familiar today: people taking the art of capturing their experiences, and of sharing stories as well, into their own hands. They filmed waves; today, anyone with a phone can record anything. We chatted to Hoff about that, too, and about making movies about surfing, why surfing has such big-screen appeal, his inspirations, retaining the imperfections in the imagery and what surfing culture means to Australia.
Andrew McAlpine
On Getting Into Making Documentaries About Surfing and Australian Surf Culture
"I'm a lifelong surfer, and then by trade I'm more of a filmmaker — I'm a filmmaker who surfs rather than a surfer that makes films. With Searching for Michael Peterson, I was fascinated by the idea of heroes and legends, and what it is about these people that captures our imagination, that we just become so enamoured about this person and somehow project all of our ideas onto that person. So that film was really about heroes and myths, and why we're drawn to these kind of people, troubled people in particular.
This film, You Should Have Been Here Yesterday, it was a little bit different. It was a bit of a response to something that I feel. Well, it's a few things. I feel that surfing undersells itself in a whole lot of ways. So back in the 60s and 70s, surfing was the leading youth culture, and youth culture was part of this movement within Australia where everything was changing. Everything was shifting as a country — modern Australia, I'm talking about — we were becoming more confident, we're starting to do things for ourselves, making our own films, our own art movement, the Australian film industry began. And surfing was right there at that moment.
Bob Evans
We were a leader in so many things that are now deeply part of the Australian cultural DNA — when we headed up the coast and experimented with not working for the man, and healthy living and connecting to country, connecting to nature. Beginning to explore Eastern philosophies and different ways of living, all of this was part of surfing. And surfing was there, because the young people were so desperate to go catch waves, it was there before the hippies and before a lot of those other more well-known movements.
So in one way, I wanted to remind surfers who we are and how important that was as part of a shift in modern Australia — and maybe remind the rest of the world to look back at that time in Australia, a beautiful time in Australia. It feels to me like an adolescent period of Australia. There was this freedom, but also this naivety, like an adolescent — full of energy and going everywhere, but we made some mistakes. At the same time, there were beautiful things about that period.
I'd like maybe as Australia moves forward to look back and go 'what was brilliant, what was fantastic about that that period in Australia?'. So that was the motivation behind this film."
Steve Otton
On the "I Need to Make This Movie" Moment with You Should Have Been Here Yesterday
"I think it gestated a long time. I must have thought about that moment when I was in Dick Hoole's garage in 2007 and 2008, thinking what other gold is on those film reels. Film technology became better, so you could go back and rescan that old 16mm film. I became a father, I've got teenage children, my interest in that generational change and how information is transferred across generations became stronger.
I think these ideas are just always kicking around in the brain and little pieces pop together. The first moment would be would be Dick Hoole's garage, and the idea that maybe there's some gold, some really important pieces of Australian history, in those film real scattered around his garage.
Andrew McAlpine
And it is important. It was important. Those surf filmmakers that went out and started filming their mates, their friends, that was the first time kids started filming themselves, ever. Before that you would have seen ABC, channel networks, Channel 9 or whatever it was, government propaganda — that was the only film footage you saw. And this was kids going 'we're not interested in that bullshit. This is what we think is important. This is what we think is invaluable'.
Then they got their hands on cameras, and at great expense and great lengths, to film those moments, whether it's surfing or life or what their friends were doing. And that's the process that's gone through until now. You see now that kids everywhere, whatever they're doing, they're filming their friends and they're sharing it with each other. And that whole conversation is taking place.
So they really changed the landscape, and it was part of this process of change in that mediascape that's just continuing at at a rapid rate now."
Alan Rich
On the Appeal of Surf Films as a Genre — Especially on the Big Screen
"It's just beautiful. It's just incredible shots.
There are a whole lot of things within those early surf films that, to me, are everything that film is about. So in those days, you couldn't see surfing anywhere else. So if you're a surfer and you're in New South Wales, you want to know what the Queenslanders were doing or what was happening in Hawaii, you had to go to the surf film — you couldn't see it anywhere else. So in that way, it became the way that we shared stories and transferred information.
Esta Handfield
Then those kids from New South Wales would see what somebody's doing in Hawaii, and then they try and copy it, and then they'd come out with a new way, and then that film would go back. And so, along with the conversation, it became really important as a community-building exercise — and cinema as a community-building and information-, knowledge-sharing kind of place.
To me, that's what storytelling and filmmaking is all about: bringing us together around these stories. But surfing specifically, you've got giant waves, you've got water, everything's moving all the time. It's like one huge, giant special effect. If you can have a giant wave 50-foot high on the screen in front of you and it comes crashing over you, it's still just an amazing, visceral feeling.
Andrew McAlpine
Surf films are a genre. This film is more of an experimental form than your standard surf adventure film. But surf films as adventure films do have a genre. They're about escapism. Surfers left the cities in Australia in our film in the 50s and 60s to go and explore new ways to live, and I think that still there's a yearning to be out there in nature, and to be enveloped by nature and to be free.
So much of our lives is driven by work and consumerism, and we're always constantly being put in a box, that you have to behave like this and that, and follow this rule and follow that rule. And surfing and catching waves, and other adventure sports as well that have grown from this, just provide this opportunity to feel free of all of that, and to be connected to nature and connected to the world in those place, rather than stuck in these regimented boxes that so many of us find ourselves in."
Dennis MacDonald
On You Should Have Been Here Yesterday Taking Inspiration From Moonage Daydream and Mountain
"Because we had all of this archive footage — we had 150 hours of archive footage, and it was all beautiful. And so we wanted to, like Moonage Daydream and Mountain, we wanted to get at an idea.
Mountain is using absolutely stunning footage to get at an idea of why are we drawn to the mountain. Why are you drawn to climb a mountain? It's a madness in many ways. Why would you do that? It's dangerous. You could die. It's cold. I don't climb mountains, but it was trying to get at the idea of what it is that draws us to these places. And so in that way, Mountain by the incredible Jen Peedom, an amazing Australian filmmaker, inspired us.
And then Moonage Daydream, just the form, that was just so radical — that form of 'hey, you don't need to have talking heads. You don't need somebody to come up and tell you what to think at any one moment. You can just sit back and absorb a film'. Moonage Daydream is an experience. It was a cinematic experience. You come out of that and you're jingly jangly — you're like 'what did I just see?'.
Bob Evans
I was really hoping to get that feeling of surfing across, and that idea of being in nature and being connected to the world. So Moonage Daydream really gave us the confidence that we could do this film. For the first 90 percent, 95 percent of the film, there's no talking heads. It's just footage and voice. And I love that everybody in the audience takes their own journey through the film.
It evokes something in them. They're not told 'this is what you should be thinking now. This is the moment'. Usually the talking head comes up and tells you 'well, that was a really great moment, we were all amazed'. I don't want to be derogatory, it's a really great filmmaking technique, but I wanted people to take their own journey through it and experience it. I tried make an experiential film."
Bob Evans
On Retaining the Imperfections in the Restored Footage So That It Really Does Look Like a Treasure Trove of Material On-Screen
"We love it. It was too much to fix it all up, and then why would you? It would have cost a fortune and taken years. And I love that idea of everything not being perfect. Some of the most-imperfect footage is some of my favourite, actually — some of the scratchy stuff that you can just barely see.
I think those imperfections speak to where it's come from — that it was lost and it was made by essentially amateur filmmakers, and it was made by kids. And they went out there and they gave it a good shot. It wasn't polished. It was innocent and naive, the films. It was innocent and naive times. And then the footage, this is what we've managed to capture.
Dick Hoole
So I really just adore those imperfections. Maybe it's getting older or something, and I go 'oh well' — and I look around at all the older people around me, and I think we're all, once we've been through things, once we've been on journeys, we all collect all these imperfections along the way. The footage is like that.
We love it, and we couldn't do anything different. So we cleaned it up. Kade [Bucheli, who also worked on Hoff's 2022 documentary Watandar, My Countryman, about former Afghan Refugee and photographer Muzafar Ali] spent 14 months scanning. And literally the process, it's a physical process — like white gloves and cleaning it, and fixing splices, and then maybe a little bit of a certain solvent. But that was it. And then when we got it as good as we could physically, then we scanned it, and went 'well, we've given it love and care'.
Bob Evans
It feels as it should to me. I've seen some films that have been restored. What they do with surfboards now, the analogy is maybe surfboards — they fix up the old surfboards, and then sometimes they fix up the old surfboards to the point that they look brand new. And then everyone goes 'oh, it just looks brand new. I loved that little ding or that little bit of discolouration or that mark that it had'.
So I think it's like that. And I've seen that in some restorations as well, that it just ends up looking like any old digital kind of modern-affected piece, and you're losing something that's now a part of that artefact. Those blemishes now belong to that footage. They are what that footage is now."
Alan Rich
On What Surfing Culture Both Means to Australia and Says About Australia
"I don't know what it means to Australia, but what I think about is that — I'm talking modern Australia, we came over here and then really post-Second World War, we started to get more confident, and that's when the kids decided they were going to head out of the cities. And they found these beautiful places up and down the coast, and around Australia. And then they came to them to surf, to ride waves.
But I have begun to think — I'm really interested in this idea of connection to Country. And I see that surfers are getting more and more connected to these places. They revere these places. We go on pilgrimages to these places. We love these places. And I sometimes question whether it's the land, this ancient land that we find ourselves on, calling us to come — and to come to us.
Because surfers, we don't go there to farm it or to make money or anything. We go there to have joy, to meet friends, to have beautiful times together. Or maybe for solace, to dive into the water and wash away our difficulties.
Andrew McAlpine
So I think it's a part of the process of this country beginning to speak to us as a people, as a modern Australian people, and draw us away from that really big British empire or imperialist force that keeps us really locked into these very regimented lives.
Surfing's been a leader culture in a lot of different ways, and I feel that maybe in this way, maybe in the most humblest of senses, maybe it's the beginning of a connection to Country that Indigenous people have had for 40,000, 60,000 years. And maybe it's the beginning of us being able to understand what maybe a sacred site means, or what maybe it means to be connected to Country. So I think it's a little window into that. But it could be a whole lot more, a whole lot of other things as well."
You Should Have Been Here Yesterday opened in Australian cinemas on Thursday, November 21, 2024.
Top image: Dick Hoole.