The annual Wavescape Film Festival showcases epic surfing short films from all over the world.

AND YET, I REMAIN | South Africa, 2022 | 8min | Director: Rick Wall & Dougal Paterson
Charismatic Caleb Swanepoel lost his leg to a great white shark in 2015, while surfing in Buffels Bay in the Southern Cape. Rehab was a stepping stone to come back harder and faster, and he returned to the ocean a few weeks later. His life became a headlong rush to succeed and achieve, fuelled by a burning, innate passion. This short film follows his journey while he finally begins to ease up on this all-consuming quest. He begins to slow down to process his trauma, while learning to free dive, an immersive place in the brine where you start to see things differently – the place that helps him come to terms with a body that has been irreversibly changed forever.

BIRTH OF THE ENDLESS SUMMER (Official SA Premiere) | US, South Africa, 2021 | 96min | Director: Richard Yelland
This is the backstory of the most watched documentary of all (in any genre) The Endless Summer, released in 1965. Emmy Award-winning director Richard Yelland tracks grizzled Californian surf pioneer Dick Metz as he vagabonds the globe from 1958 to 1961, and returns to South Africa decades later. Importantly to us, it chronicles in detail what actually happened – warts and all – when Robert August and Mike Hynson came upon our shores with Bruce Brown to shoot the original. It tells the story of how Dick met John Whitmore, by “happenstance” as the Oom later recalls, which changed the history of surfing forever. A nostalgic Dick, 92, meets up with local surfers and visits old haunts where he shared good times with the Oom and his family.