Staff Pick 2010: Lauren Kesner O'Brien, Founder/Executive Media Producer
Gum for My Boat is my pick for 2010 partly because it's a great summer film but also because it shows such a cool side of Bangladesh, surf culture at its best, and beautiful beaches, colors and scenery.  A good film to soak up summer during the hot days of August.

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A story of hope, Gum For My Boat focuses on the Bangladesh Surf Club and its members. Many of the approximately thirty boys and girls in the club are street children or from very poor families, and had never heard of surfing or the way of life it represents. An ocean once deemed off limits, due to fear and a very conservative Islamic culture, becomes a source of pleasure, escape and even potential livelihood.

Follow professional surfer Kahana Kalama (a past guest star of Fuel TV’s series On Surfari) as he works with the Hawaiian-based nonprofit, Surfing The Nations, and learns from the young club members that surfing sometimes can mean much more than catching waves.

After graduating from Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, and a stint with FOX News in Jacksonville, Russell has worked as a freelance cameraman, editor, and director for the past six years. His clients have included Inspiration Network and Fuel TV, and he's also done commercial and promotional work for Jet Blue, Microsoft, Jedidiah Clothing, Reef, the Discovery Health Network and various nonprofit humanitarian organizations.

Russell co-directed, filmed and edited award-winning documentaries such as Dare Not Walk Alone, Day Of Light, The Bethany Hamilton Story, Walking On Water, and last year’s NYSFF short film winner, Distant Shores, and most recently Gum For My Boat: Surfing In Bangladesh, which will be featured on Fuel TV this winter.

Based in San Diego, California, Russell currently is freelancing as a cameraman and editor specializing in projects for internationally and domestically-based nonprofit humanitarian organizations, as well as working as a cameraman for reality and documentary-based television shows. He is also directing Reef Sandals’ new feature surf film. Russell has worked with Tom Curren, Rob Machado, the Hobgood Brothers, and other notable professional surfers and been a part of productions in more than thirty countries.

Buy the Gum for My Boat DVD here: http://www.jedidiahusa.com/xcart/product.php?productid=440&cat=0&page=1

Surfing The Nations is a non-profit organization based in Honolulu, Hawaii that seeks to give communities, both locally and internationally, a message of love and hope through the sport of surfing and acts of selfless service. They orchestrate food drives in Hawaii and make yearly trips to Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Israel and Egypt, bringing clothing, supplies and surf culture to the international communities.

Check out their website to donate or volunteer:
http://www.surfingthenations.com/bangladesh.php

Trailer:

• Gum for My Boat Website
  http://www.gumformyboat.com/
• The Wuss Productions, Russell Brownley's company
  http://thewussproductions.com
• Surfing the Nations
  http://surfingthenations.com/

Interview with Russell Brownley

t21: How old were you when you started surfing?
RB: Fourteen years old. I met guys that were surfers then and thought they were so cool. No one in my family surfed and at first they were pretty against it. They thought I’d become a beach bum.

t21: Of all places, what brought you to Bangladesh to make a movie about surfing?
RB: Tom Bauer of Surfing the Nations has been a good friend of mine for years and had always told me about their Bangladesh project. Tom was the catalyst. I had to come up with the money.

t21: How did you do that?
RB: I got a couple of private investors and paid the rest out-of-pocket. There was no expectation of making money back from this documentary. It was a beautiful story I wanted to tell, and Kahana [Kahana Kalama, pro surfer] was on board and Surfing the Nations was too.

t21: Kahana seems really close with the Bangladeshi surfers in your documentary. Does he live there?
RB: No, but that’s the whole idea of surfing. He shows up and he’s this great surfer and the kids are just so excited to meet him and see him and follow his lead and there’s an instant bond. Like if you’re a soccer player visiting a soccer team in another country.

t21: So it’s just part of the surfing culture?
RB: Yeah. When I was eighteen years old I went through a lot of changes and started traveling and realized that anywhere you go and surf you have an instant cultural “in.” That’s when I realized that surfing is a great way to share your heart and maybe even a better way of life. There are plenty of stories like the Bangladesh Surf Club sitting there waiting to be told.

That’s my goal – to tell these stories of places where surfing has come to a culture and created a better life. Like in Peru, Northern Brazil, Mozambique.

t21: Most of the surfer kids in your documentary come from poor families. Does Surfing the Nations, the charity group featured in your documentary, specifically target poor communities?
RB: Surfing the Nations runs the biggest feeding program in Oahu, Hawaii. They’re working with the poor communities in their backyard, Hawaii, distributing food three times a day so they thought, let’s do this in other countries.

It's not about bringing wealth to the country, it's about bringing hope through surfing. And the hope can bring ideas for businesses, like surfboard rentals for tourists, so the idea is using surfing as a vehicle to help make a self-sustaining community.

t21: Your documentary premiered at the New York Surf Film Festival in September 2009. What’s happening with it now?
RB: For one thing Fuel TV bought it from us as a license, 50,000 viewers, that’s raised a lot of volunteer support for Surfing the Nations. The kids in Bangladesh are also really stoked – these kids usually blend into a country of 144 million people, it’s the most densely populated country in the world. Here they get to have a voice all over the world.

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