Thomas Campbell talks Yi-Wo
Words Demi Taylor
I’m speaking with Thomas Campbell on the eve of the World Premiere of his highly anticipated film Yi-Wo. “
I'm kind of a little bit of a lone wolf. I'm not super out in the public where I interact with people specifically that know even what I do, and that's on purpose,” he says. But if you’ve had even a passing interest in surfing and surf culture over the last 25 years, then you’ll be more than familiar with the work and influence of Thomas Campbell.
15-18 September, London Surf / Film Festival is bringing a special screening tour of Yi-Wo to the UK, hosting series one-off screenings in Cornwall, Devon, London and Newcastle. Details and tickets HERE
A surfer, skater, artist, photographer, sculptor and filmmaker, when Thomas Campbell’s seminal triptych of surf films first landed (The Seedling, followed by Sprout and The Present) they were hungrily devoured as a manifesto - a counter point for the counter culturalists. It was the reign of Layne. It was Occy’s comeback as he grabbed the crown vacated by Kelly Slater. Surfing was fast, furious and vertical. Thomas’s films slowed it right down, capturing the outliers, the avant-garde, the moments the moments in between. They catalysed a paradigm shift in the culture, that would see logs, fish and all manner of craft celebrated, redefining both the art of waveriding and the way we document it. Ten years in the making his latest audio-visual masterpiece Yi-Wo is set to do the same again.
Given the timing of this call, he’s surprisingly generous with his unhurried conversation. But it feels like this generosity of spirit has been a guiding force; the reference points for this latest opus are a nod to a life well lived. They are as broad and expansive as the resulting feeling you get from immersing yourself in the film. The idea was seeded with a 2014 trip to the firing points of Morocco with Dave Rastovitch, Lauren Hill and Trevor Gordon before spinning across the globe over the best part of a decade, collecting a cast of standout surfers revered for their style along the way – from Alex Knost and Karina Rozunko to Ryan Burch, Craig Anderson and more. “Everyone in the movie is just basically my favorite surfers,” says Thomas. “It’s a nice congregation of a group that has a lot of respect for each other and is excited to be together. I tried to relay that, and relay a sense of play and fun because, I think in a lot of times in surfing movies, you don't see that. It’s just all about performance, which is just such a small part of it.” There are costumes influenced by Cornish folkloric rituals and poetic prose, translated into Hawaiian by Cliff Kapono before being rendered back into English and transmogrified once again into a new form. Captured on 16mm by the world’s leading cinematographers and set to a mind-altering soundtrack, it’s art and surf movie all at once.
“With the first three films, I would say that those were more like educational films, at a point where people didn't have access to knowledge about riding different types of equipment or craft, “ explains Thomas. “And I kind of spelled it out like, ‘Hey, you could do this different stuff, you could surf like them. If you want to do that, ride this,’ That kind of stuff.” And as is often the way with the best stories, his ‘alternative’ perspective was driven by personal experience. “I grew up at Dana Point,” he explains, “My friends and I, we rode shortboards, longboards, 70’s single fins, we rode whatever, and that wasn't very normal, you know? But we had a very good longboard wave right by our house, and good shortboard wave and we’d go skateboarding in Laguna, so I just tried to document what I liked. (My first films) I felt they were set in a pretty traditional surf movie template - somewhat in the vein of like MacGillivray, Freeman, Witzig, Bruce Brown and stuff like that, but I tried to modernize it.”
But Yi-Wo is a departure, perhaps a more creatively expansive endeavour. “My last film, Ye Olde Destruction was a skateboarding film and I started to find a new voice, which I think parlays into this film,” says Campbell. “I would say that the intensity of life over the last eight or so years has inspired some deeper thinking. With this film I feel like that education part for me was done and I just wanted to go into a more creative space, it's more like that idea of it kind of opening up questions more than giving answers.”
“I played with different themes and stretched into places that can honour the depth of our existence…I feel like I'm kind of like a rock tumbler,” he explains with trademark underplay of the intensive creative process required to produce a film of this depth and level. “I just put the rocks in a long time ago, pretty jagged, and then they just tumbled in my brain for a long time, then they come out kind of smoothed out…”
On his hopes for the film, and what people take away from it, he says “I guess I would hope maybe people first off get inspired to go in the ocean and maybe, secondly, that it inspires them to just think about what they're up to, and what this life is, you know, hopefully in a positive, expansive way. But I surely don't know… I just feel like people need to have whatever experience they have, and I'm pretty sure they will.”
Don’t miss the Yi-Wo UK Tour - your only chance to catch the film on the big screen here:
15th SEPTEMBER > THE POLY, FALMOUTH, CORNWALL
17th SEPTEMBER > RIVERSIDE STUDIOS, LONDON
17th SEPTEMBER > TYNESIDE CINEMA, NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
