Watch: “Makai”

Our protagonist walks outside, the camera slowly pushing toward the doorframe. The exterior world expands in the frame like John Ford’s iconic shot in The Searchers, except instead of the Old West it’s the deep greens of Oahu’s North Shore, and in place of John Wayne is Julian Williams, a Hawaiian-born African American surfer.

As he stands barefoot in Hawaiian suburbia, sea-spray suddenly starts falling from the sky and onto his face. He speaks candidly but it rings confessional – “The ocean is not just for them, it’s for all of us.”

Such is the message of MAKAI, a cinematic portrait of surfer Julian Williams as he speaks to his experiences as a black surfer on the North Shore of Oahu. Shot on glorious 16mm film, director Loris Russell interweaves Williams’ introspective narration with bold, languid camera movements that speak to his inner world and the coastlines of Hawaii and California. 

Floating beds, womb-like rocks, lefts become rights, re-enacted board thrashings against the American flag hanging flaccid on a windless day. It strikes us as the type of film made by a non-surfer (sorry Loris if you are), but in a good way – like through the lens of someone who can appreciate surfing as an emotional act, as part of someone’s personal history. 

If you read our last piece on the history of black surfing and aquatic cultures, be sure to watch this more impressionistic — and at some points surreal — six minute short film of what surfing is like as a perceived outsider.