It seems entirely appropriate that I've started writing this on a Hawaiian Airlines jet en route to Maui's Ritz Carlton Hotel to screen my film SURFING FOR LIFE (SFL) at the hotel's "Celebration of the Arts." I've just completed a rigorous month of promoting and publicizing the film's theatrical openings throughout the Bay Area. Our web site home page, SurfingforLife.com (funded by PIC), will be up any day and I just received word that American Public Television (APT) has accepted SFL for a national PBS broadcast. I feel the stress receding as beautiful images of Hawaiian beaches come into focus. Aloha sweet islands!

Flash forward to 1993 when my wife, Jane Kinzler was talking with surfer/ gerontologist Roy Earnest, her colleague in the San Francisco senior services community. To foster a more positive image of later life, Roy was developing a workshop on healthy aging and had written an article on older surfers as an example of the "age wave." Jane suggested the combination of old surfers and healthy aging was a great concept for a documentary, and that Roy should come to the premiere of BOUND BY THE WIND, my PIC-funded film on nuclear "downwinders." I was coming off of fifteen years of filmmaking focused on very somber topics like nuclear power, nuclear war, toxic waste and radiation victims. I was more than ready for a project that was a bit lighter, more life-affirming and more fun. Older surfers sounded absolutely right.

Our fundraising approach shifted to organizing fundraising screenings for Roy's two main constituencies: the surfing community and members of the field of aging. Over a dozen house party and senior center screenings enabled us to raise enough to afford our first Hawai'i shoot, with John Kelly, Anona Napoleon, Woody Brown and Rabbit Kekai. We also continued to improve and expand our sample tape that screened widely at several aging conferences and generated remarkable press for a rough work-in-progress. I knew the press coverage would be helpful but I couldn't have anticipated how helpful.

The values of aloha and 'ohana in SURFING FOR LIFE are embodied in each of our subjects, but perhaps most clearly in native Hawaiians Anona Napoleon (60) and Rabbit Kekai (79) and in Shay Bintliff, M.D. (64), a resident of the Big Island. Anona's sequence on "Napoleon's Holiday" captures the spirit of 'ohana when she and Nappy, her legendary canoe helmsman husband, take the children and grandchildren out of school and work to surf, paddle and enjoy a therapeutic family day in the ocean. Rabbit talks about passing down what he learned from Duke Kahanamoku to the younger generations as we see him giving a surf lesson to a very happy young woman we cast for the lesson. Shay, who has known Rabbit for 35 years, says "Rabbit is a legend. He IS aloha, he just oozes aloha, for the 'aina, and for the sea." Shay then defines her extended family to include everyone from her ex-daughter-in-law to her pet ducks. Her sequence with the granddaughter she adores and her peak experience surfing while holding hands with her two sons, is another memorable tribute to the importance of 'ohana.

The ten-day shoot had so many memorable moments. Some highlights included: the shoot at Punahou School with Fred and Peter Cole hilariously reminiscing about skipping the dreaded mandatory faculty meetings when the surf was up; the two-day Woody Brown shoot on Maui where he was recognized and showered with adulation before and after surfing at Ho'okipa: and the group shoot at Waikiki when Peter, Fred, Anona, John, Shay and Rabbit were totally "stoked" to be surfing together and were afforded enormous respect and courtesy in the lineup. Of course, if Rabbit Kekai tells the surfers anywhere in Waikiki that the next wave is for the "kupuna surfers," they obey and defer. After the surf session, the lively conversation about their mutual friends was a joy to observe and record. We returned home from our final Hawai'i shoot exhilarated, with 28 hours of mini DV footage and renewed hope for completion funding.

Post-production began in earnest with Avid logging even before I completed an intense year of producing, writing and directing CROSSING THE DIVIDE, the concluding episode in the timely four-part PBS series DIGITAL DIVIDE. The series focused on teens, technology and the disturbing gap between the digital haves and have-nots. Throughout the second and third years on SFL, I had also traveled to Java and Cuba on film projects. Through a producer friend in L.A., I reached actor and surfer Beau Bridges, asked him to narrate SFL and, after screening the sample tape, he gladly accepted. I hired Shirley Thompson, a whiz on the Avid and a superb narrative and visual editor, and she made the documentary flow and sing. We followed the basic structure I designed for the paper edit, interweaving ten stories along thematic lines with Fred Van Dyke's dramatic decision to quit surfing big waves as the emotional climax.

Legendary Hawaiian musician, Eddie Kamae, attended our Ritz Carlton screening, giving me an opportunity to introduce and thank him for his contribution to our sound track with The Sons of Hawai'i. I'm especially proud of the SURFING FOR LIFE sound track featuring 17 tracks of Hawaiian slack key and steel guitar music, including Gabby Pahinui, the Tau Moe Family, Ray Kane, Dennis Kamakahi and George Kuo. The four Hawaiian music labels we worked with -- Hula, Panini, Dancing Cat and Rounder Records -- were very accommodating in accepting our "most favored nations" deal for discount licensing fees for synch and master rights. Not quite such a bargain were the Beach Boys' Surfin' Safari and Johnny Mercer's Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Postive, but we felt we had to have both songs. I negotiated good rates with most of the surf filmmakers, like Bud Browne, Greg Noll and Bruce Brown, for surfing archival footage. Some cameramen, like the great water shooter Don King, donated their footage. Tom Disher composed a brilliant and multi-dimensional score with great surf music and toe-tapping big band swing.