The Best Web Edits Of 2019

Its been another exciting year for surfing’s progression, with the mantle being pushed ever-higher in every discipline from twin fin mastery to big wave chargery.

As ever, there have been a dedicated crew of lensmen and women in tow to capture and cut all the action, projecting their subsequent creations into cyberspace for your free-of-charge delectation.

So put your feet up, pour yourself your Christmas drink of choice and dive into the best clips of 2019:

Up first, Kai Neville and Craig Anderson’s artful epic ‘The quieter you are the more you can hear’, filmed over an 18 month period in locations including Iceland, Fiji and Portugal, scored by an undulating soundscape and imbued throughout with both Craig and Kai’s creative style, this flick truly pushes the envelope of online surf cinema.

The highly anticipated follow up to Bierke’s 2016 banger ‘Bezerke’, ‘Flow State’ takes on a more meditative tone, while maintaining deep and technical lines in obscenely heavy waves as its central theme. It also features candid interview snippets that sit a long way from the contrived talking head format we’ve become accustomed to, offering some genuine insights into the young Aussie hellman that adds another dimension of interest.

This is a glorious little number featuring Mikey Feb exploring a perfect sand-bottomed point in a bustling West African fishing village, interspersed with a selection of locally recorded afrobeat performances. The incredible cinematography, original score and February’s sublimely flowing surfing combine to make this our favourite edit of 2019.

A short but lovely flick featuring Josie Prendergast surfing a dreamy point under the early summer sun near her adopted home in NSW. It’s a celebration of surfing’s subtleties; artfully cut by Nathan Oldfield and beautifully scored by Nicole Reynolds.

An epic 30 minute short featuring Nic Von Rupp circumnavigating some of Europe’s best-surfing regions via train and other more environmentally conscious modes of overland transport. Surfing highlights include mind-boggling sessions from around Ireland, feat cameos from Mick Fanning, Tom Lowe and more, a couple of crazy waves in Scandinavia and some outrageous kegs at home in Portugal.

A spontaneous mission south from Cali comes up trumps for Torren Martyn as he scores a fist full of perfect cylinders somewhere in Central America on his quiver of twinnies. We caught up with Torren a little earlier this year to talk about his career so far, how he came to just surf twin fins, and his current trip through Europe. Read it here.

In this clip, Albee Layer proves beyond doubt that he is on the most progressive and versatile surfers on earth – and one of the least tight-lipped when it comes to sharing his opinions on our sport and his place in it. There’s crazy aerial innovation, top-drawer Jaws performances interspersed with Albee’s amusing and insightful takes on surfing’s progression.

A visual odyssey, staring 2017 longboard world champ Honolua Blomfield. The clip is so well constructed, it bolsters the argument that longboarding- and women’s longboarding in particular- may be surfing’s most artistic and aesthetically interesting mode of practice. It combines seamless surfing with dramatic visuals and beautiful sound design, setting itself firmly apart from the common surf web-clip fodder with which we’ve become accustomed.