Through the Doggy Door featuring Mason Ho and Sheldon Paishon follows a surfer’s dream to trade extreme poverty in paradise for the life of a pro surfer and a world of perfect waves. Ahead of the European Premiere of this award winning, must-see documentary at London Surf / Film Festival Saturday 25th November, Chris Nelson spoke with Director Joe Alani about the reality of being Mason Ho’s filmer, fabled breaks and the reality of getting a feature film made.
“Being the filmer on the beach with the top pros – a lot of people think it’s a dream job… it’s like if you put four kids in a candy store, but you tell one kid you can just watch your friends eat the candy. It would drive me crazy, honestly…”
That’s how Through the Doggy Door director Joe Alani describes the first gig he accidentally graduated into after his days as a ‘local ripper’ sponsored rider evolved into a more stable job working with …Lost. And one of the pros he was filming with was one Mason Ho.
“I got to go to Hawaii and film with Mason and then a bunch of other video stuff with him over the years,” explains Joe. “He would come stay at my house when he was in California and vice versa, we have a pretty tight relationship”
One of those trips was to Desert Point, Lombok’s fabled left-hander. Accompanying Mason on this particular trip was with his long-time friend Sheldon Paishon. Hailing from the West Side of Oahu, Sheldon was a super talented, unsponsored, young rider who had grown up the hard way. At the age of 12, Sheldon’s family lost their home and lived in a beachside tent for the remainder of his adolescence close to the legendary surf spot Makaha. Checking through the footage from Desert Point, Joe and Mason were struck by a section of Sheldon deep in the barrel, light refracting through the curtain.
“This water shot of Sheldon throwing up like the West Side sign in the sunset, it just looked cinematic,” explains Joe. “We just looked at each other like, wow… And that’s when we’ve just started discussing the idea of what to do with Sheldon and his story.”
“Our initial idea wasn’t this deep dive into his past and homelessness,” says Joe. “It was about becoming a pro, because he’s this pro level surfer… but he had been so isolated on the West Side and had never been out of Hawaii. Never had a passport. So when Mason did this trip to Indonesia with him, everything was just a mind blowing new thing for Sheldon. Most surf videos, the pros have been the Indonesia 30 times already, but Sheldon was generally surprised about everything – like the plane. So we’re like, ‘Oh my God, how funny would it be to get him sponsored and document this 20-something year old guy becoming a pro surfer’.
But once Joe started filming with Sheldon for the project, he quickly realised the story was much bigger. Sheldon opened up about his life and the obstacles he’d overcome. His candour gave access to an issue few understood – the fine line many families tread between survival and homelessness. This is a problem right across the US, but on the Islands, the tented villages that line the beach are hidden in plain sight, lashed by the rainy season downpours, pounded by the wind. How do you survive in a system with no safety net? Joe knew that was the real story. “There’s a really emotional scene… we came home and were looking at the footage, tears in our eyes, we’re like this, this is something much deeper than a funny surf video.”
There’s a cliché thrown around about young guns, “growing up hungry”… hungry for success. But for Sheldon, he was often just plain, stomach-grumbling hungry. And this lit a fire. Joe and Mason had a plan to get the film made. “We made a 20 minute edit went back to Hawaii during the North Shore season. We showed it at the Rip Curl house with Mick Fanning, Owen Wright, Conner Coffin, all the Rip Curl executives. They were expecting this… ‘Oh here’s a couple of clips of him ripping,’…everyone in the room had tears in their eyes. When it ended Mick Fanning, Owen Wright… they all got in a line and started shaking Sheldon’s hand. And I think that was the moment we were like, ‘This is special’.”
Mason and Sheldon’s friendship goes back to when they were young groms. Joe first shot them together around 2008 and the story follows the evolution of this young, brash kid to the man he is today. But more than that – this is a documentary with many layers, exploring how the oppressive colonial past impacted the native Hawaiian’s lives and how the West Side of the island became more and more impoverished – bypassed by investment and tourism.
The West Side of today is an intimidating place to visit – let alone film. “If it wasn’t for Mason and Sheldon I wouldn’t have had that access…Cameras are pretty frowned upon in certain places, certain beaches over there.” But the West Side and especially the beach was the safety net for Sheldon. “The village literally raised him, all those lifeguards and legendary surfers out of Makaha,” explains Joe. “He’s really lucky, because he’s really talented, and I think in general, people don’t want to see talent wasted… I’m sure there’s a lot of kids that aren’t as outgoing and have less talent that definitely slipped through the cracks.”
That Through The Doggy Door has taken so long to produce and bring to the big screen is a testament to the passion and drive that Joe Alani and Mason Ho have had for this project, for Sheldon’s story and for the wider issues associated with the unhoused epidemic the US.
“I hope this story can resonate and inspire both surfers and non-surfers,” says Joe. “It just happens that surfing is the catalyst that Sheldon was around, that’s what saved him. But the story is really about overcoming poverty… and about heart.”
Through the Doggy Door is premiering at the 12th Edition London Surf / Film Festival presented by Finisterre. Bringing to the capital three nights of the very best in surf cinema with premieres, Q&A’s, workshops, good times and more at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, you don’t want to miss this.
EDITORIAL USE ONLY Carla Magee (left) and Aine McAuley at the shore of Lough Neagh for Surfers Against Sewage, Northern Ireland. Pictured date: Saturday October 28 2023. PA Photo. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire
Surfers Against Sewage finds popular sites for bathing in England fail to meet minimum safety requirements
60% of inland bathing spots monitored by SAS over the 2023 bathing season would be classified as ‘poor’ based on Environment Agency methods
Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) supported 20 communities to ‘bridge the gap’ left by inadequate and inefficient official testing regime.
SAS’s annual water quality report brings together citizen science data, EDM data, and figures from SAS’s Safer Seas and Rivers Service to paint a picture of water quality
across the UK.
The report highlights a severe lack of monitoring in Scotland and Northern Ireland and unearths a shocking reliance on emergency sewage discharges in Wales.
A new report released today reveals that multiple popular inland swimming sites in England are unsafe for water users. 40 locations were sampled weekly by volunteer citizen scientists throughout the 2023 bathing season. 20 were popular sites for bathing, and 20 were upstream of a nearby sewage overflow associated with the swimming spots.
Of the 40 locations, SAS found that 24 would be deemed ‘poor’ quality were they designated bathing waters, as per Environment Agency methodology. Four out of 20 bathing sites showed a clear decrease in water quality from locations upstream to downstream of a sewage overflow. The data is released just weeks after the Government announced its intention to diverge from the EU’s standards for monitoring water quality in England.
Surfers Against Sewage’s (SAS) annual water quality report explores the shocking state of UK bathing waters in a year when untreated sewage was discharged over 399,864 times into UK waterways – the equivalent of more than 1,000 discharge events every day. The report notes that the majority of overflows in Scotland and Northern Ireland go unreported, meaning this figure is likely a significant underestimate of the true frequency of sewage discharges into the UK’s rivers and seas. In Scotland only 4% of sewage overflows are monitored whilst Northern Ireland Water admits it lacks the ability to record or measure when sewage discharges occur.
Meanwhile, SAS have unearthed documents that indicate that Welsh Water have used emergency overflows – permitted only in the case of catastrophic events – to release sewage into a designated bathing water multiple times over the last two years. The Gwbert Emergency Overflow, which impacts the designated bathing water of Poppit Sands, discharged 24 times in the same number of months, indicating a clear breach of permit.
Giles Bristow, CEO of Surfers Against Sewage, said:
“Yet again, our annual water quality report reveals the complacency and disregard of governments, water companies and regulators towards the health of rivers and coastlines in the UK – and by extension people’s health. How much do our blue spaces need to
suffocate in sewage before those we elect to keep us safe and protect our environment wake up and smell the shit?
“We are seeing failure at every level – from governments and regulators failing to enforce the law, to water company fat cats pocketing dirty money and refusing to clean up their act – with the general
public ending up the biggest loser every time. How many times can we say ‘enough is enough’? Our leaders need to prioritise transparency, ensure laws and regulations are properly enforced, and prevent water companies profiting from pollution.”
Sicknesses in the UK due to sewage pollution reported to SAS reached 1,924 cases in the last year – nearly triple the number of cases reported a year prior. These cases resulted in 1,987 days taken off sick, which translates to 5 years of work lost to ill health caused by polluted waters. Many of these sicknesses have led to hospitalisation, events cancelled, earnings lost, and businesses closed. As this data just relates to cases reported to SAS, these numbers are likely only the tip of the iceberg.
This year Reuben Santer, a physics teacher at a secondary school in Exeter, was forced to stop working after contracting labyrinthitis (an inner ear infection) following a surf at Saunton Beach in Devon. Doctors confirmed the infection was due to a virus or bacteria entering Santer’s ear during his surf. The infection later developed into an incurable condition called Ménierè’s disease.
Reuben Santer said:
“I have never been anxious about anything in my life, but this experience has definitely made me worried that symptoms will come back when driving, surfing, at work, or in any situation where vertigo could be dangerous.”
The report also highlights the impact that sewage is having on independent businesses, and the livelihoods of those who run them.
Steve Crawford, who until recently ran a surf shop in Scarborough’s South Bay, said:
“My shop has been closed all summer. From the 6th May the RNLI put the red flags up as the beach was at a poor quality here in Scarborough. A week later the council took all the flags down and put warning signs up. I decided at that point that I can’t take people surfing.”
“I couldn’t carry out any lessons on the beach when the lifeguards themselves think it’s unfit to go in. My income stopped dead on the 6th May .It’s only because my dad died last year that I’m surviving now because I was left some money. If it wasn’t for that I would be out on the street.”
This year’s water quality report is designed to empower communities across the UK to put pressure on their local representatives in the lead-up to a general election in 2024. In the last year, thousands
have joined the protest for safer rivers and seas, with over 45,000 emails sent via SAS’s free Safer Seas and Rivers Service app to MPs and water company CEOs, calling for action to protect the UK’s waterways from further pollution.
This year SAS developed the End Sewage Pollution Manifesto, which sets out the policies needed to clean up our rivers and seas. Created in collaboration with environmental charities, sports governing bodies and community groups around the UK, the manifesto suggests a five-point plan to make the UK’s waters healthy and safe to enjoy again:
Enforce the law and regulations
Stop pollution for profit
Prioritise high-risk pollution events
Empower a nature-led approach to tackling sewage pollution
Reveal the truth by ensuring UK-wide transparency on sewage pollution.
LS/FF has just dropped the line up for the 12th Annual London Surf / Film Festival x Finisterre hosted 23 – 25 November 2023 at Riverside Studios, and it’s an epic celebration of the very best of surf culture.
Bringing to the UK the very best surf movies from across the globe including 4 World, 2 European and 8 UK Premieres taking in big waves, tall tales and toes on the nose, adventures to the coldest reaches, stories that stick a pin in ephemeral moments of perfection, documentaries that spark debate, surfing that blows the fins out and destinations that blow the mind – these films represent the pinnacle of contemporary surfing in the here and now.
Accompanied by Q+A’s and ‘Audiences with…’ some of the world’s most relevant exciting surf creatives including style-master and explorer Mike Lay, chargers Connor Maguire and Sandy Kerr plus a raft of game changing filmmakers including Chris McClean, Jon Aspuru, Rebecca Coley, Maddie Meddings, Clem Mcinerney and Spencer Frost plus a special session hosted by cultural commentator Looking Sideways’ Matt Barr, a very special gallery show and more… you’re not going to want to miss this!
The lineup includes
UK PREMIERE: Mundaka.
Presented by legendary surf adventurer Kepa Acero this must see documentary combining archive footage and interview with legends takes us back to a moment where AI, The Goat and the hard charging locals tucked into the perfect day at this hallowed spot, a magical session that would leave a permanent mark in European surf history. Celebrating that special convergence of tide, wind, swell and time, this triple bill gala opening is an ode to that elusive moment we all chase: RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME
UK PREMIERE: CORNERS OF THE EARTH – KAMCHATKA
A film by Spencer Frost & Guy Williment. A journey to the frigid outer reaches of Kamchatka. After 2 years of planning this was to be the adventure of a lifetime. As the trip got under way, Russia invaded Ukraine changing the political landscape and obstacles faced by the team. With Mi-8 helicopters, skidoos, frozen campsites, and frozen bank accounts, this surf journey quickly became far more than anyone could imagine.
UK PREMIERE: Through the doggy door
Featuring Mason Ho and Sheldon Paishon, this award-winning and intimate documentary follows a surfer’s dream to trade extreme poverty in paradise for the life of a pro surfer and a world of perfect waves. Sheldon Paishon is a talented surfer from Oahu’s Westside. At the age of 12, his family lost their home and lived in a beachside tent for the remainder of his adolescence. Surfing was Sheldon’s escape
Amongst many other films….
Tickets are live priced from £12.50. Evening passes: £20 include entry to a whole night of films plus a free beer from the good folk at Sharp’s… and a few exclusive goodies! Evening passes are limited, always sell out and when they’re gone, they’re gone!
“We founded LS/FF in in 2011, dreamt up around our kitchen table in the deep mid-winter, after a few good waves,” says Festival Director Demi Taylor.
“The aim was to gather together the UK surf community to share the stoke, the storytelling, the culture and it’s grown to be so much more than that. Over the past decade, we’ve had the privilege of making friends and films, bringing some 250 of the finest surf movie premieres to the UK, sharing them on the big screen as they were intended to be enjoyed – accompanied by a packed crowd of likeminded folk. It’s become an international must attend for purveyors of the glide and surf culture aficionados alike. See you there!”
C-Skins how announced NuWave wetsuit launch for Spring 2024 ‘for every budget, and every person…’
Press release..
“We’re stoked to be introducing NuWave: a full range of natural rubber wetsuits. For every budget, and every person, there will be the option to choose a wetsuit with minimal environmental impact. We are making this available for the many, not the few, as soon as possible. Offering a natural rubber alternative is the latest step forward in our on-going efforts to make the best possible wetsuits.
“In the lead up to the product launch we’ll be telling the full R&D story behind NuWave in a series of articles on our website. For now, you can check out other key developments we’ve made to lower our impact via our Planet page (https://c-skins.com/blogs/planet).
As many of you will know there has been a huge return of he magnificent tuna to the UK and Irish waves over the last few years. Local fishermen have been really restrained in protecting them and indeed helped in the scientific and conservation efforts, but now the tina face decimation on the edge of protected waters.
“There is now a fleet of 35 long liners, with a total of 2,100 miles of lines and hundreds of thousands of baited hooks, waiting for the blue fin tuna we’ve seen – and studied – off our coast for the last four or five years. Marine conservation is a global game, and only works if all play by certain rules, and understand that every reproduce is finite.”
“This represents an industrial scale, opportunistic plundering of a glorious and precious species that is on the brink of a comeback from near oblivion. Oceanic animals know no barriers, something we as global citizens must surely try to understand if there’s to be any hope…”
This isn’t ‘fishing’ any more and in the long term it’s commercial suicide.
France wins first Para Surfing Team World Championship, England win first ever ISA team medal, the copper
Para Surfing’s winningest woman Victoria Feige (CAN) earns fifth gold medal, extends own record
Golds for Sponge (Wales) and Charlotte Banfield (England)
Silver medals for both Melissa Reid and Zoe Smith (England)
Norway’s first ever ISA medal won by Ismaël Guilliorit
Performance levels were pushed, new records were set and history was made on a phenomenal day of surfing that saw fourteen World Champions crowned in Surf City USA to close competition at the 2023 ISA World Para Surfing Championship (WSPC).
France claimed their first WPSC team gold medal, to join with their team wins across all other current ISA competitions. USA took the silver medal, Brazil, bronze. England won copper, their first ever ISA team medal, largely thanks to Charlotte Banfield’s victory in Women’s Stand 3.
“It’s really, really exciting,” Banfield said. “I think the team we’ve got this year is the strongest we’ve ever had, and not only is it a strong team, it’s a supportive team.”
Three multiple World Champions added to their medal counts. Davi Teixeira (BRA) and Marta Paço (POR) each earned their third gold medal, while Victoria Feige (CAN) further extended her own record, collecting her fifth. This year however, para surfing’s winningest woman faced her strongest competition yet.
“Seeing the level rise, it’s so sweet to have a victory, but seeing the movement rise is probably the best part,” Feige said. “It’s also so empowering, because I feel like I’m not alone, there’s other girls in the world with disabilities like mine who’ve got that fire to really push the level.”
New World Champions were crowned in six divisions. Aaron Paulk (HAW), Kirk Watson (AUS) and Sarah Almagro (ESP) each won their first gold medals after multiple previous finals, Laurie Phipps (FRA) claimed gold in her second, and Nagisa Ikegami (JPN) and Joel Taylor (AUS) topped the podium in their very first event.
“[This has been] the best experience of my life,” Taylor said. “I’ve waited for 30 years. I’ve dreamed of being a World Champion from when Eppo (Michael Eppelstun) won the first world title for Australia in bodyboarding. I worked a long time as a bodyboarder and then I had my injury and then over 20 years out of the water and 12 months later, as a para surfer, it’s mind-blowing.”
Alelí Medina (PUR), Rafael Lueders (BRA) and Llywelyn ‘Sponge Williams (WAL) each backed up their inaugural victories in 2022. After winning her first gold medal in the assisted Prone 2 classification in 2022, Emma Dieters (AUS) collected her second in her new classification, the unassisted Prone 1. 2020 Stand 2 gold medalist Roberto Pino (BRA) earned his first gold medal in the Stand 1 classification.
Norway’s Ismael Guilliorit returned to competition after six years away to make his first Final and win his nation their first ever ISA medal.
“For the Norwegian people, I opened the door,” Guilliorit said. “So now they can believe that we are able to take some good waves at the competition.”
ISA President Fernando Aguerre said:
“Many years ago, when we started with the first Para Surfing World Championship, it was an act of faith, an act of hope, thinking that this could become the beginning of a new era for surfing, an era in which we open our arms and our competitions to all surfers, regardless of their physical abilities, and it has been wonderful.
“What a week Huntington Beach has served for us, incredible, unforgettable. Of course in the back of all our minds is the hope, it might happen, that the LA 2028 Paralympic Games will finally include Para Surfing.”
RESULTS
Team
Gold – France
Silver – USA
Bronze – Brazil
Copper – England
Men’s Vision Impairment 2
Gold – Aaron Paulk (HAW)
Silver – Roy Calderon (CRC)
Bronze – Pierrot Gagliano (FRA)
Copper – Jack Jackson (AUS)
