“Hold Up… There’s Actually Some Cool Shit Happening Here”

“Wedge is a bodysurfing wave. I’m not really interested in anything else going on out there.”

Michael Cukr, for those who need a reminder, is a Los Angeles based filmmaker, photographer, and director who first made his bones at What Youth.

After spending five years there, What Youth’s creative team disbanded in 2018. Cukr politely lingered around surf and skate for a little while, making a detour through the world of non-fiction film and art institutions — MoMA, LACMA, Apartamento, among others — before leaving surfing behind for the better-lit pastures of Versace, Vogue and Acne Studios, and the glowing casino of high fashion, where his subjects became Bella Hadid, Sabrina Carpenter and Rihanna, to name a few.

From Bad Boy Ryry to Bad Gal Riri. The boy got good and out.

“I didn’t intentionally drift on surf industry stuff,” says Cukr. “I guess I just got curious about working in art and fashion, and I just kind of got swept up in it.”

But there was also a broader cultural shift happening in surfing.

“It felt like surfing became a lot less centralised,” he continues. “When I was working at What Youth, it felt like everyone was working together. But now it feels a little more disjointed, like it’s every man for themselves. I mean, there are still some cliques — Kai Neville is doing his thing with Epokhe, Wade Carroll’s films, and the Rage dudes are doing their thing. There’s these little pockets, but they’re pretty tight-knit, so I guess I just unintentionally moved on.”

Five years ago, Cukr moved down by Wedge. Evenings would come, and he’d wander down to the water’s edge to watch the sunset, where one fateful night he noticed a group of large adult mammals behaving strangely in the water. He had no framework for what he was seeing.

This was before he knew about bodysurfing.

“The first time I saw Tim Burnham and Scott Matthews out there, it reminded me of the first time I saw someone do a flip trick on a skateboard, or grind a picnic table,” remembers Cukr. “It was like I was a kid again, or like when I saw Dane Reynolds in Salina Cruz when he was filming for Lost Interest, and I was just like, ‘What the fuck? You can do that? That just looks different, and I didn’t know people could do that.’”

Time passed, and eventually Cukr stopped watching from the shore and joined the population in the water.

“I just didn’t know bodysurfing was a thing that people took seriously. I thought it was a thing little kids did, just fucking around in the shorebreak.”

“The more time I spent in the water,” Cukr continues, “the more I realised there’s a really rich community and history here, and people who are so skilled and talented and stylish, and just fucking gnarly.”

Y’ever see a bodysurfing film?

Much coverage around it at all?

The archive is thin. Cukr figured it was time for a film.

“I just feel like this needs to be documented in a way that highlights the intensity of what’s going on out there,” he says. “I’ve been on boat trips and seen people surf some pretty dangerous waves, and this feels just as gnarly. My goal is to make the Campaign 2 of bodysurfing.”

The resulting film, BLACKBALL, takes its name from the blackball flag flown on the lifeguard tower, signalling that surfers need to clear the water because it is, for a brief and beautiful period, time for the bodysurfers to begin.

Cukr admits that, despite ordering a custom 10ft black ball as a film prop, historically, he hadn’t exactly been carrying the flag, so to speak.

“I always thought like black ball culture was super kooky and it represented inflatable pool toys and neon boogie boards and shit,” he says. “It’s kind of funny, because growing up as a skater, I’ve spent my whole life hating rules, but this is the one time I actually kind of like a rule. I just think it’s cool to preserve the culture. If the flag didn’t exist then you just couldn’t exist as a body surfer.”

Reclaim the flag, viva la revolución, the movement now televised.

“I still think the blackball flag is still really kooky in other places, but I really respect it at Wedge because I feel like it’s ground zero for bodysurfing,” Cukr continues. “To me, Wedge is a bodysurfing wave. I’m not really interested in anything else going on out there.

“This might be bodysurfing’s debut into the mainstream surf world, and I’m definitely at the low end of the totem pole of Wedge hierarchy,” Cukr finishes. “But the whole culture just reminded me of being a little kid and hanging at the skatepark. It’s super niche and super weird, and super fucking bad ass.”