Lissette and I attended the Waimea Ocean Film Festival again this year and were very happy to see a variety of wonderful films depicting ocean themes including exploration, sailing and whales. We also viewed Paniolo O Hawaii which features ranchers and their families from the Island of Hawaii. This film was created in the early 2000’s and includes a group of long time Hawaii Island Paniolo that I have met or recognize and includes areas of the islands Lissette and I have actually visited by horseback which made the movie extra special. The Life and Times of Mike deGruy was special as I recognized Mike from various ocean films I had seen in the past especially those featuring deep diving submarines and diving suites. He died in a helicopter crash as it lifted off from Jaspers Brush Aerodrome, New South Wales for aerial photography of the launching of a deep sea submarine in nearby Jervis Bay associated with James Cameron’s Deep Sea Cahallenge movie. On board the helicopter were the pilot and Mike deGruy. Mike was assisting J...

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Lissette and I give each other for Christmas a 4 day pass to the Waimea Ocean Film Festival which for us is the best gift of all-incredible sights and sounds of our ocean. The films are shown in multi venues including the Fairmont Orchid in the Mauna Lani Resort, very close to our home. Most films, but not all, are related to the ocean and are video masterpieces. The films vary in length from 5 minutes to full length documentaries that are often only published for promotional purposes by their sponsors like Red Bull, Ford or Tag Heuer. As an example we saw a Ford sponsored movie that highlighted surfers searching for the next XXL wave site featuring big wave surfer Andrew Cotton. We saw a full length feature called The Big Wave Project with 90 minutes of some of the largest big waves ever surfed in locations like Peahi, Maui (Jaws), Nazare, Portugal and Waimea Bay, Oahu. Often these documentaries include a question and answer session with either the films featured surfer or other person involved like the film's producer, camera...

Filed under: Hawaii Life by Rick Oliver
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