We were asked to accompany Sam Bleakley, travel writer, geographer and former European longboard champion, to film the latest instalment of Brilliant Corners.
Brilliant Corners, now in it’s second series is a professional surf adventure series of 52 minute long documentaries. Travelling with his longboard in tow, Sam uses surfing to get under the skin of the coastlines he visits, showcasing emerging local surf cultures, cultural tourism frontiers and capturing the power of surfing for social good. Through interviews, lyrical narrative and beautifully filmed surfing sequences in extreme destinations, Sam celebrates surfing as dance, learns about local music, art, food and carnival, and demonstrates how surfing can offer detailed understanding of the changing relationship between cultures and coastlines. Brilliant Corners is a celebration of life, revealing positives in often miss-represented locations and discussing critical issues of sustainability within surfing communities and coastal environments.
We travelled to West Africa on a 10 day trip, to document Sam on his travels to see how Sierra Leone has bounced back from the Ebola medical crisis, surf the river mouths of the Western Peninsula, and meet the local crew at the Bureh Beach Surf Club. Like neighbouring Liberia, Sierra Leone is developing a proud local surf culture. Sam believes that the development of the Bureh Beach Surf Club is one of the most exciting things happening along the 400 km long mainland coast, in front of a racy, consistent left pointbreak. ‘The waves they make you feel fine’ is the club motto, perhaps a future Sierra Leonean proverb that will soon attract more traveling surfers.
Trailer
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