How surfers destroyed an idyllic Indonesian island

This is a tale of dis­ease, dis­ap­pear­ance and death – of black mag­ic, malar­ia, cul­ture clash­es and Coca Cola. It all began in the 1970s when two Aussie surfers stum­bled across the ​‘per­fect wave,’ a point on the remote Indone­sian island of Nias. Lit­tle did they know, their dis­cov­ery would set off a chain reac­tion that would have dev­as­tat­ing unin­tend­ed con­se­quences for this island community.

Point of Change is an award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary by Rebec­ca Coley that unearths a sto­ry that many surfers and islanders would pre­fer to for­get. Blend­ing pre­vi­ous­ly unseen Super 8 archive, con­tem­po­rary inter­views and ani­ma­tion, the film inves­ti­gates the dark forces that ​‘surfer colo­nial­ism’ can unleash. But by speak­ing to all par­ties, the film weaves a more nuanced nar­ra­tive, to reveal a sto­ry far more com­plex than mere­ly pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive effects. As always in life, real­i­ty is often a con­fus­ing shade of grey.

Ahead of the UK pre­mière of Point of Change at Lon­don Surf Film Fes­ti­val, Huck spoke to direc­tor Rebec­ca about surfing’s impact on tra­di­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties and telling this sen­si­tive tale from mul­ti­ple perspectives.

How did you learn about the sto­ry of the point on Nias? What made you feel there was a film there?

I first heard about Nias through friends when I was in Aus­tralia work­ing and stopped off on my way home. I loved the wave & there was some­thing about the place, I was intrigued by a feel­ing or vibe I couldn’t quite put my fin­ger on. It felt unlike any­where I’d ever been before in my life. I heard sto­ries about the first surfers and there were rumours of malar­ia and black mag­ic, so I was intrigued. Then as I began to dig deep­er, the more I found out, the more I knew this was an impor­tant sto­ry to tell.

On my jour­ney to mak­ing the film I vis­it­ed first as a tourist, then I vis­it­ed as part of an NGO aid trip after the tsuna­mi, then I stayed and lived for a cou­ple of years on and off. So, it was also through real­ly immers­ing in the cul­ture and hav­ing deep­er rela­tion­ships with peo­ple that the big­ger fea­ture film idea came to be.

Could you tell us a bit about the huge impact that surfers ​‘dis­cov­er­ing’ Nias had on the island and its people?

At first the locals didn’t know what to make of these white guys… They talked about the colo­nials return­ing. They didn’t know if they had guns or shields or what they were car­ry­ing. Then they saw them danc­ing on the water and they’re more curi­ous. Slow­ly trad­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion starts to hap­pen. Like any­thing, peo­ple try to keep a secret, but they also want to share an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence with friends. Slow­ly, word trick­les out and it wasn’t long before The Point was in surf mag­a­zines and films. The pin­na­cle was Coca Cola turn­ing up to make a com­mer­cial there. The unin­tend­ed con­se­quences were open­ing the flood­gates, I guess, but they nev­er could have known how crazy it would get. 

The film tries to walk the line in that big grey area in the mid­dle where there are pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives effects of all that hap­pens. Yes ​‘par­adise’ isn’t pris­tine any­more, and that is dev­as­tat­ing. But some­one like Bonne Gea who is a local mus­lim girl, becomes Indonesia’s first woman cham­pi­on surfer & Asian cham­pi­on surfer and escapes a life of arranged mar­riage she didn’t want, so she is hap­py about it. So it is com­pli­cat­ed and there are dif­fer­ent lay­ers to it.

How did you set­tle on this hybrid doc­u­men­tary style to tell this story?

Kevin and John went to Nias in 1975 with their Super 8 cam­era and tri­pod, so there’s this beau­ti­ful, mag­i­cal footage of Lagun­di Bay exact­ly as they found it. It took a while to track that down in someone’s attic and get it telecined. I don’t want to spoil the sto­ry but there’s also amaz­ing footage of 1976 and more of the char­ac­ters who turned up. That was an amaz­ing moment to realise we had some­thing to tell that part of the sto­ry. But it wasn’t enough. 

We also had the chal­lenge of bring­ing all these dif­fer­ent for­mats togeth­er. I’d shot with var­i­ous dig­i­tal cam­eras over the years and we had all these dif­fer­ent aspect ratios and for­mats for all the dif­fer­ent footage, so that was anoth­er part of why we land­ed on ani­ma­tion. We worked on the sto­ry as being a jour­ney through time that suit­ed the var­i­ous for­mats, but also worked for the over­all themes of the film. 

The ani­ma­tion is like the sub­con­scious of the film and adds lay­ers to the mean­ing. We only used ani­ma­tion in those impor­tant moments where we need­ed to tell a part of the sto­ry we had noth­ing else for, but was also an impor­tant beat in the film. I met Maxime, who did all the ani­ma­tion, in a pub in New Cross about ten years ear­li­er and we talked about it a lot before we were final­ly able to afford to do it. 

For the ​‘80s sec­tion I met Dick Hoole at his house in Byron Bay and we went through his 16mm on a Steen­beck edit­ing machine, which was great as a cel­lu­loid lover. He let us use some unseen footage from his trips to make Storm Rid­ers and Asian Par­adise in the late ​‘70s and ​‘80s, but again it took a while. With the help of the Aus­tralian Surf Film Archive we got the footage digi­tised, telecined, grad­ed etc. 

I always felt the sto­ry deserved to be so much more than talk­ing heads and so there’s a cre­ative approach to retelling the his­to­ry. Includ­ing the locals’ per­spec­tive and mix­ing the archive and ani­ma­tion in an evoca­tive way, hope­ful­ly takes the audi­ence on this odyssey through time.

Does surf­ing have a ​‘colo­nial mind­set’ prob­lem? How did you broach this issue in the film?

That’s a big ques­tion and a short answer is yes, to an extent. Of course, every surfer is dif­fer­ent and every local is dif­fer­ent and every place is dif­fer­ent. But just by the nature of the fact that we as ​‘West­ern­ers’ are priv­i­leged to trav­el to these des­ti­na­tions and have an eco­nom­ic advan­tage, means that even with­out mean­ing to, we can have an impact we might not intend. So being aware of that is the first step to change. In the film, I give the con­text of the his­to­ry of colo­nial­ism in Nias to under­stand the locals’ per­spec­tive, give con­text to what hap­pens next and to let peo­ple make up their own minds. Nowa­days it might not be a con­scious type of colo­nial­ism, how­ev­er all that has gone before has led us to where we are today. So the prob­lem is that we are only there and able to inter­act in the way we do in the con­text of all that has gone before.

What are the lessons we can draw from the sto­ry of Nias? Do you think surf­ing is begin­ning to recog­nise the impact it can have on frag­ile com­mu­ni­ties – or is there still lots of work to be done?

I want the audi­ence to watch the film and make up their own mind. I like the fact that so far audi­ences have come out with lots of ques­tions. That’s inter­est­ing and is how we can get the con­ver­sa­tions going.

Yes, I think some surfers recog­nise that and there is change hap­pen­ing on some lev­el for sure and that is great. If we take surf­ing out of it — it’s an issue in lots of dif­fer­ent sports and activ­i­ties and places. So there’s hope, surf­ing can be a force for good, too. But there’s def­i­nite­ly still work to be done. 

Lon­don Surf Film Fes­ti­val presents the UK pre­mière of Point of Change, plus a spe­cial film­mak­er Q&A with direc­tor Rebec­ca Coley on Thurs­day Novem­ber 23 at River­side Stu­dios.