Trailer + Tour Dates: Stern Fever
A 99-minute history of the world’s most magnetic + monstrous wave.
Talon Clemow’s first trip to Shipsterns came with Laurie Towner, Brendan Margieson, Dylan Longbottom, Joel Parkinson and Andy Irons. 2006. He was Bong’s Audio Visual Manager at the time.
“It was my first ever time to Tassie and my first sort of engagement with the wave at Shipsterns,” he says. “It was incredible actually. We stayed at Polly’s Place in Cremorne. Just around the corner from where I currently live in Clifton Beach.”
That trip eventually became part of a much longer relationship with Tasmania, and the basis for Stern Fever, Clemow’s roughly 99-minute documentary on the history of Shipsterns Bluff, which actually wasn’t the location’s name originally.
The much more innocuous Fluffy Tonka and Splash Rock preceded Shipsterns as monikers.
Clemow came to surf filmmaking through a fairly broad production education. He spent 13-and-a-half years working in the film and television space. He spent several years in Europe with CNBC Europe, BBC and IMG Media, and at one point worked as a roadie for David Bowie, Prince and the Spice Girls.
“I moved overseas to learn how to shoot, how to light, how to edit, colour grade and sound engineering,” he says. “That time was sick actually. Sometimes I look at all the memorabilia and chuckle at my past life.”
Right around the GFC, Talon was made redundant by Bong, and used the payout to start One Palm Media – the production company that brought us THUNDERCLOUD, documenting the historic swell of 2012 during the Volcom Fiji Pro.
Shipsterns however, remained unfinished business.
Clemow first started developing the film around the core group of the Shipstern crew aka The Southern Lords in 2010. That version stalled, restarted after THUNDERCLOUD, and eventually led Clemow to move to Clifton Beach in November 2015. “I’ve been living here ever since,” he says.
The original concept was a more character-focused film, but Clemow says years of production discussions ultimately failed to produce an agreement. “I’ll be honest. I’m gutted that I’m not making the film that I originally set out to make,” he says.
“I hung onto that idea for 15 years.”
Rather than abandon the project, Clemow pivoted to make a historical film and include some of the incredible footage he’s amassed over more recent years. After speaking with Andy Campbell, he began looking at the archive he had on hand: old interviews with surfers, photographers and magazine editors, plus years of Shipsterns footage.
“I created this idea about telling the Shipsterns story through the evolution of the exposure of Shipsterns,” he says. “That’s how we all know about it.”
“At the time we started shooting, Shipsterns was groundbreaking,” Clemow says. “It was the Chopes and Shippies era, and those were the two waves that really exploded into the surfing public’s consciousness.”
Stern Fever follows the wave from its early surfers and first documented sessions through the magazine era & today.
The film includes figures from the Andy Campbell, Rasta, and Margo era through later generations, and focuses heavily on just how groundbreaking those early sessions were. There’s even some words from Stab founder Sam Mc, discussing the period of popularity regarding Shipstern in the media and it’s over saturation.
“It was a real wild time,” Clemow says. “It was a proper frontier.”
Talon has enough A-grade material that Stern Fever may eventually expand into a three-part series covering the magazine, web and social-media eras separately. For now, though, the first film is finished.
“I feel like this will be a real one-stop shop,” Clemow says. “An all-in-one encompassing perspective of how Shipsterns came to be.”
PREMIERE DATES
October 3 — Hobart, Tasmania
Local screening.
October 8 — Cremorne Orpheum, Sydney
Official world premiere.
Clemow also plans to take the film to Los Angeles, New York, Europe and South Africa, with those dates still to be announced.
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