Far from the Cronulla beaches and different from your standard surfing film, “Between Land and Sea” paints a warm and entertaining portrait of the lifestyles and motivations of Irelands County Clare’s vibrant surf community.
This surfing lifestyle movie showing at Event Cinema’s Cronulla on Friday 23rd February spends a year in Lahinch, a small surf town on Ireland’s west coast-not unlike the Cronulla of the 80’s, and the unlikely home to five surf schools and of one of Europe’s best big-wave breaks.
This observational documentary – at times intimate and at times epic with big Atlantic swells– embeds itself within Lahinch’s surfing community to present an engaging portrait of life by the sea.
Digging deep into the lives of this diehard group of surfers, who want their local wave to be known around the world, Between Land and Sea provides the most exhilarating of big-wave surf footage,as well as an insightful, moving and humorous portrait of the ocean-going natives of County Clare.
The movie features real people like Ollie O’Flaherty, the current poster-boy of Irish surfing, former pro Fergal Smith, Hawaiian big-wave legend Shane Dorian and Aussie surf journalist Ben Mondy.
The film is for surfers and non-surfers too - among the residents of Lahinch featured, we meet Fergal Smith, who has turned to organic farming to feed his young family now that his surf sponsorships have come to an end; John McCarthy, owner of Lahinch Surf School who speaks about how his faith has influenced his surfing; and Pat “The Whale” Conway, a long-distance ocean swimmer in his sixties who just can’t seem to give the game away, despite saying every year will be his last.
During the northern summer Lahinch is alive with beach goers and the town’s surf schools do a roaring trade. But during winter the schools close down, meaning many of the teachers have no income to rely on during the colder months.
Nonetheless, this charming community of surfers wouldn’t chose to be anywhere else, enduring difficult lifestyles in the hope of sharing their local waves with the world-but they should be careful of what they hope for.
