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“The Pursuit” World Premier
Laguna Theater, Laguna Beach, CA Sept 2.
La Paloma Theater, Encinitas, CA Sept 11.
In the 1980’s many of us saw Julius Irving (Dr. J) and then Michael Jordan take the game of basketball “above the rim”. In a similar phenomenon, performance surfing is now more than ever executed “above the lip”. Aerials, surfing maneuvers done in the air, are now an integral part of the elite surfer’s repertoire. And a young local surfer and film maker is capturing this cutting edge surfing in his debut feature film “ The Pursuit”.
Aaron Lieber started filming his friends skateboarding and snowboarding when he was only 13 years old. After graduating from Fallbrook High in 2004, Lieber is a Communications major at California State University Long Beach. He is studying film and communications there inspired by the fact that the school had produced legendary Hollywood film maker Steven Spielberg.
Lieber’s love for travel and the surfer’s wanderlust were urges too strong to ignore. So he hooked up with a local company Transworld Media. He traveled covering surf contests and exhibitions and making short videos for Transworld’s web site. Through this gig Lieber met some of the hottest surfers in the sport. Equipped with his connections to the risings stars of surfing, Liebers creative juices began to flow and the framework for his first feature surf film fell into place.
Southern California has a long tradition of action sports film makers that started with Bruce Brown of “Endless Summer” fame. This tradition continued with Warren Miller, the king of winter action sports film making. And in recent years has been carried on by Encinitas’ Taylor Steele. Through Transworld Lieber met Steele and was able to assist Steele with some editing for one of Steele’s projects, Sipping Jetstreams.
Lieber said, “Taylor’s, mentorship and direction helped me make my dream of creating my own feature film a reality.”
For The Pursuit, the 22 year old Lieber took his cameras and crew of hot young surfers to world class breaks in countries like South Africa, Australia, Indonesia, Samoa, Tahiti, France, and Central America. “Making a surf film is more complicated than I could have ever imagines, says Lieber, “but I think the key to getting it done was persistence and always making the best of bad situations. It’s been intense, but a lot of fun.”
The product is a surf film that chronicles some of the most progressive surfing being done today. Couple this with an exotic backdrop, and a message throughout the film that dreams are realized through hard work, and you have a high quality entertaining film. See you at the La Paloma Theater in Encinitas on September 11!
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