5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Genesis' surf documentary chronicles trip of a lifetime for Huntington Beach duo
Some of the most beautiful waves that Luke Guinaldo and Dylan Sloan have ever surfed were at a secret spot near Nias, an island located off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
The two Huntington Beach surfers marveled at the waves. Then Sloan tried riding one.
'The wave went so below sea level, I couldn't drop it,' Sloan said. 'It just fully threw me over the falls.'
Guinaldo watched the situation unfold.
'I didn't see that he didn't make the drop, but I look back and I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, where is he?'' he said. 'I see Dylan pop out, and I'm dying laughing because I knew he went over the falls on the biggest wave of his life. I can't imagine he's ever had a wipeout that gnarly.'
A realization soon set in.
'I was kind of tripping,' Guinaldo added, starting to laugh. 'I was like, 'Dang, he already took his wipeout, now I'm next.'
Guinaldo, 20, and Sloan, 17, won't soon forget that month-long surf trip to Indonesia they took from mid-April to mid-May this year. Now others can enjoy it, too.
'Genesis,' a surf film chronicling their trip, debuted Friday night with a pair of shows at Surfing the Nations in downtown Huntington Beach.
Hurley, which sponsors both surfers, budgeted the trip, but Guinaldo said this was still very much a do-it-yourself sort of film project. Austin DeSousa served as cinematographer.
'Dylan had been to Indonesia, I had been to Indonesia, but we never went together,' said Guinaldo, a 2022 Huntington Beach High graduate, during a group interview with the Daily Pilot. 'One night, after hanging out, I was showing him videos of my trip last summer, and he was showing me videos of his trip last summer. I was like, 'We've got to go together and score waves, make a movie out of it.' That's kind of how it was born.'
Guinaldo has been surfing on the World Surf League men's Qualifying Tour for the last few years. Sloan is still in school, an incoming senior on the Huntington Beach High surf team. Together, they had plenty of adventures during their weeks in Indonesia.
DeSousa, who had never before been out of the country, said he would have to leave his camera equipment outside to de-fog due to the high humidity.
'One of my favorite parts is meeting a lot of people from all around the world,' said DeSousa, a resident of Orange. 'We met this group from Portugal, and they were super nice. We saw them at two different surf spots we went to, [surf resorts] Macaronis and Hollow Trees. I got to surf with them one time, and they were super supportive of everything we were doing.'
Highlights also included a 17-hour car ride from one side of the country to the other, so they could get to a harbor and catch a ferry.
'The harbor was disgusting, so bad,' Guinaldo said. 'We're getting ripped off, we don't know how much the tickets cost and people are taking our money, but we're just smiles all the way through. Then we get on the ferry and it's hot and sweaty and loud, people are yelling and playing music. We just toughed through it … and it was awesome.'
More gratifying times came atop the waves themselves. The surfers stayed at the Point resort and found 'the most perfect' wave with the resort owner, Sloan said.
He called the finished film 'amazing.'
'That's the dream that we wanted,' Sloan said. 'It's definitely something people have never seen before … To miss school for a month and go on the best surf trip ever? Sign me up.'
The premiere Friday night was successful, with the first showing selling out so a second was added later that night. The surfers thanked their families and also Brett Simpson, a two-time U.S. Open of Surfing champion from Huntington Beach who is now Hurley's head of sports marketing.
They hope to hold a screening of 'Genesis' at Huntington Beach High in the future, Guinaldo said.
