“People are delighted surf tourism came and changed their lives.”
An interview with Jersey-based surfer and filmmaker Rebecca Coley
“Surf tourism has meant that people on Nias can get out of poverty and send their children to university where they can have a better life – they didn't want to go back to subsistence farming. People who live along the point would say they're absolutely delighted that surf tourism came and changed their lives. Lots of them have literally gone from living in a hut with a mud floor, and a little stove in the corner of the room, to having nice houses with balconies and sea views and all these things we might aspire to.”
I first heard about Rebecca Coley when she made the excellent short film Changing Point about Bonne Gea, Indonesia’s first woman surf champion, who grew up surfing Lagundri Bay in Nias. And she’s now released a new documentary about the spot called Point of Change, described by the Guardian as “beautiful, gripping and thought-provoking”, which is hard to disagree with [it’s also so rare to see a surf film reviewed in the Guardian so bigs up Becky for that!].
Mixing dreamy archive surf footage from the 1970s with animation and contemporary action sequences, the film looks at the unintended consequences of surf tourism on a remote island’s culture and it definitely made me think a lot. It was great to chat to Becky about her experience of making the film and the questions it raises and I hope you enjoy this chat.
Hey Becky, how’s it going? How’s the surf in Jersey?
It's totally flat at the moment.
I’m working on the set of the tv series Bergerac. My main job is as a filmmaker but it’s hard and I’m just about hanging in there, so I do lots of other stuff in production liaison and also to encourage incentives for people to film in Jersey. [This reminds me of the threads
is running on how creative freelancers often have to work on various different projects to make ends meet.]
Where did the idea to make the film come from? What’s your connection to Nias?
I first went there as a surfer about 20 years ago. I’d heard lots of stories from other surfers about this amazing wave. I’d done a year working in Australia and was on my way home, and thought I’d try and get myself to Sumatra.
It was before the tsunami in 2004, so it was a different place, full of Australians and lots of other people living cheaply for as long as possible. You could live like a queen, but it never sat right with me. But it’s just a really interesting and special place, it had this intrigue about it, because it had a really ancient culture, which was very much alive. In the villages, the architecture was amazing, like Spanish galleon boats, and all the houses are made from old wood without any nails.
People are in poverty, but yet they're interacting with tourists, and having this idea of how westerners live, which is obviously a holiday where you drink every day. And the juxtaposition of these lifestyles together intrigued me. It’s more spoken about now but the idea that we’re able to go to somewhere like Nias and take advantage of that really stuck with me.
I extended my visa and stayed a bit longer and got to know people and then I went back after the tsunami and did more of a community project there and made a little film for the news at home.
I also got involved in Sumatra on the mainland, because I’d gone to see the orangutans, and this village where I'd been had a massive flood, so I ended up helping with setting up an NGO there as well. I hadn't intended for any of that to happen, it was just sort of my life at the time.
Had you met Bonne Gea [Indonesia’s first woman surf champion who features in the film] then?
I met Bonne when I came back to Nias – she’s amazing, such a pioneer badass. It was quite a macho culture and she was the only girl, with four brothers who all dreamed of getting sponsored, but she thought I’m going to do this no matter what and she was the only one who kind of escaped and made it. It's not quite the dream that people think, but she's done it.
There’s this poignant bit in the film where, despite all her success in surfing, her mother just wants her to get married…
Yeah, even now she says that's what they would want for her. She escaped the arranged marriage, a life where she would have been stuck in the kitchen. She’s now in Bali doing really well, running her own surf coaching business and being financially independent. She was sponsored but only got free boards and clothes, not enough to survive.
I made Changing Point, a short film about Bonne’s life in 2015, and when I went back to Nias for that I thought I’d gather as many interviews as I could to see if there was a bigger film there.
And when I persuaded Kevin Lovett [one of two pioneering surfers who first surfed Lagundri Bay in Nias in 1975] to find his old Super 8 footage from back in the day I realised ok, we’ve got amazing footage.
One of the interesting things about the film is you don’t say that surf tourism has ruined Nias but you also don’t say that it hasn’t
That's very much a deliberate thing, to walk that line in that grey area. I did have different producers saying to me you could make this a much stronger film if you came down on one side of the argument but it's more interesting to do something where you are holding both sides. As humans, we're full of contradictions and polarities and all of that, things are not black and white and there's this complicated middle ground with everything.
Surf tourism has meant that people on Nias can get out of poverty and send their children to university where they can have a better life – they didn't want to go back to subsistence farming. People who live along the point would say they're absolutely delighted that surf tourism came and changed their lives. Lots of them have literally gone from living in a hut with a mud floor, and a little stove in the corner of the room, to having nice houses with balconies and sea views and all these things that we might aspire to.
We can also comment on the environmental destruction, and cost of that but I feel it’s about trying to have a holistic approach. There are so many humans now we have to find a way that we can interact responsibly, and in a way that doesn’t destroy all the precious places.
So, the locals are generally happy with how surf tourism has developed there?
Well, it’s really difficult, because it depends so much on who you talk to. Some people will say we want to be like Bali, we want McDonald's, and as many tourists as possible. But others will say no I don't want to lose the old way of life and character of the place. I don't want to have too many tourists here and I want it to remain locally run. Because one of the things that's quite unique about the point is that it's locally owned.
Interesting. That ties into the concept of tourism leakage and how we should spend money locally when we visit places?
That largely happened in Nias. [The development] feels less ordered and more charming as it really feels like the locals are doing it their way. But then you do get pro surfers coming in and wanting to know why there isn’t aircon.
Do you worry that developers from outside the community are circling?
There was talk of it being a designated World Surfing Reserve and when I was there, the chief of the village signed a letter of interest, but then some of the people involved went travelling or moved to Bali and there hasn’t been a local custodian to take it forward. Obviously, I don't want to be pushing it as a western person, as it feels like something that should be locally led. But then some local people also want guidance and help to protect the wave.
When I do screenings of the film I always get asked at the end, what’s the answer? How can we be conscious surf tourists? And my response is that’s what I’m trying to say with the film – I don’t know, it’s complicated. A lot of surf travel, say boat trips, are often western-owned and the money doesn’t trickle down, and it’s about trying to move away from that kind of injustice.
Since I started making the film people more generally are talking about decolonisation a lot more and locals around the world are questioning whether they want tourists.
On a personal level I work with Sea Trees and Blue Carbon to minimise my impact. I don’t want to be hypocritical and tell people what to do as I still travel but I do think we need to think more holistically about not destroying the places we visit and to look at ways of giving back. Is there a need the locals have identified that you can in some way help or assist with? Perhaps donating money to a national park or locally run NGO that's working in the country.
And it does feel like we go in circles. In the film Kevin and John were trying to escape the war and right wing politics of the time and the macho surf culture. They take off, and unwittingly invite tourism and those western problems to another place.
Point of Change is screening in London tonight and then across the SW of the UK over the next week or so. For dates of these and future screenings around the world and online head here – it’s definitely worth a watch.
Other news:
I’m really excited to be taking part in a panel discussion on how board sports are a great way to build confidence at the Tremula Festival in Brighton next month. It’s part of an event called The Confidence Sessions by the excellent Board Women podcast (which I was lucky enough to be on earlier in this year). You can buy tickets for the event here.
It was an honour to interview big wave surfer Laura Crane for the cover of the latest Huck Magazine (my second magazine cover story of 2024 stoked!). She was incredibly thoughtful and honest about the highs and lows of her career in women’s surfing, and it made me think a lot about the Cooler magazine days, which I call in the piece “the peak objectification years” of the sport, and the long shadow they must have cast for those involved. You can buy the issue and support awesome and independent print media here.
My good pal and first ever interviewee for the newsletter Tony Butt has a new book out, which explains the science of waves in a super easy way for surfers to understand, answering questions such as why do some spots hold heavy waves and some not & how are sandbars formed? You can buy it here on the devil’s platform.
Please fwd this newsletter to anyone who you think might be interested & if you have any story tips on any of these themes pls get in touch.