You Should’ve Been Here Yesterday

Surfing has developed from an alternative lifestyle movement to become a beloved mainstream sport and an integral part of Australian folklore. It has also gained a reputation for sexism and white male aggression.

Our love of nostalgia, some cracking yarns, and the beautiful remastered 16mm film footage from the original surf filmmakers will combine in You Should’ve Been Here Yesterday to attract our audience. The film will take them to the very heart of our male-dominated surfing mythology to reflect on our mistakes and decide what we want to keep and what we want to throw away.

Surfing was one of Australia’s first alternative lifestyles. We will remind the surfing community of this history, and celebrate this beautiful time of adventure and naivety without ignoring our mistakes.

We’re encouraging people to re-discover and value the environmentalism, artistic self-expression, and positive ethics at the core of surfing. The revered films and images will give these ideas credibility in the broader surfing community and help challenge the more negative, aggressive and sexist behaviours. With surfing position at the ore of Australian mythology these ideas will then filter through to the broader Australian community.

We have agreements with most key filmmakers of the era and are partnering with Umbrella Entertainment for the film’s cinema release.

We are working closely with the National Film and Sound Archive to access, prepare and rescan the materials and the film scanning is being supervised by film colour grading legend Billy Wychgel at Elements Post.

We are in discussions with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the National Maritime Museum about potential exhibitions.

Major online surf publications Surfline, Swellnet and Pacific Longboarder will present stories each month over the 18 months leading up to the release of the film.

The film encourages the surfing community to look at themselves in new ways. By taking pride in the earliest values of surfing we expect to promote discussion in the surfing community. The film will ask difficult questions not just of surfing’s greatest heroes, but of all of us. These discussions will help create a more ethical surfing and Australian community.