Join us for an evening with the documentary filmmaker Charlotte Lagarde for a screening of her award-winning trilogy about women surfers. Charlotte’s love of the sea led her to document these women’s lives. The films are Zeuf (4 min), Swell, (23 min) and Heart of the Sea (55 min). A discussion with the filmmaker will follow the screenings.

ZEUF
Zeuf (1994) is a four-minute portrait of Robin “Zeuf” Janizeufski, a 34 year old breast cancer survivor, a surfer and an ICU nurse. Zeuf challenges the ideas that one associates with breast cancer, representing a strong and beautiful image of life. Winner of the Cine Golden Eagle and the Director Award at the Black Maria Film Festival, Zeuf, Lagarde’s first student film at Stanford University, was on Sundance channel and shown in over 30 countries.

SWELL
Swell (1996) is a portrait of inter-generational community of women surfers in Santa Cruz, CA. Winner of a Gold Apple Award and the Isabella Liddell Art Award, Swell became a cult movie in the women surfing community.

HEART OF THE SEA
Winner of the PBS Independent Lens Audience Award, Heart of the Sea: Kapolioka’ehukai (2003) is a breathtaking portrait of surf legend Rell “Kapolioka’ehukai” Sunn, founding member of the Women’s Professional Surfing Association and beloved breast cancer activist. With exhilarating water scenes and captivating archival footage of surf culture, Heart of the Sea is an important look at Hawai’i’s integral part of America’s rich cultural heritage, a stirring portrait of a courageous legend.

For more information about the films, check Swell Cinema (www.swellcinema.com).

The Filmmaker
Born in France, Charlotte Lagarde has completed over a dozen documentary films since 1991, intimate portraits of people and places. Her love of the ocean led her to document magnificent women surfers in her award-winning short films Zeuf and Swell. Heart of the Sea, her feature-length documentary about the Hawaiian surfing legend, Rell Sunn, was broadcast in over 30 countries and won numerous awards including Best Documentary Award at the Ashland Independent Film Festival and the 2003 PBS Independent Lens Audience Award.

Her producing credits include Deann Borshay Liem’s In The Matter Of Cha Jung Hee (PBS/POV 2010) andGeographies of Kinship (in progress) and Carrie Lozano’s Academy award-winning Reporter Zero, which premiered at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival. Lagarde’s work has aired on PBS series POV and Independent lens, the Sundance Channel, HBO and Canal +, and received funding from ITVS, the NEA, the NEH and the Sundance Institute among others. 

After 25 years in California, Lagarde now lives in Brooklyn, where she is currently working on a follow-up film on her longtime friend Zeuf. This cinematic dialogue between a filmmaker and her early subject reveals a remarkable friendship at its most vulnerable and lucid as Zeuf approaches the premature end of her life. It is an intimate, inspiring portrait of a fiercely intelligent, vibrant, and beloved woman in close dialogue with the ocean, her body, her cancer, even her own death—which she describes as “a very gentle pull.”