A DOCUMENTARY featuring an intimate insight into Jack Johnson’s evolution from rising North Shore surf star, to iconic surf filmmaker to world-renowned musician is being screened in Cornwall.

The London Surf Film Festival is showing the highly anticipated SURFILMUSIC at The Lighthouse Cinema in Newquay on June 19 and at The Poly in Falmouth on June 20.

A spokesperson said: “Before Jack Johnson was a stadium-filling, platinum-selling musician, he was a surfer.

“At 17, just a month after Jack Johnson made the trials of Hawaii’s prestigious Pipeline Pro, a serious surf injury at the legendary North Shore reef, resulting in some 150 stitches and knocking out his front teeth, rewrote Johnson’s script and ended his competitive surfing career.

“His next step, making surf films with close friends, like the hugely influential Thicker than Water and September Sessions which featured some of the era’s very best surfers like Kelly Slater and Rob Machado, became the bedrock for a broad creative life.

“Moments captured in and out of the water on his trusty Bolex, later surfaced in his songwriting.

“Bringing together rare footage from these formative surf films along with personal and family archives, accompanied by present-day reflections, the film explores how lived experience, friendship, and exploration shaped the sound and stories behind the music.”

Directed by long-time friend and collaborator, award-winning filmmaker Emmet Malloy he recalls: “Jack and I became friends as college was ending and the real world was calling. We loved making films and finding good tunes to place in them.

“Jack was a beautiful cinematographer, and I had big aspirations for him, until I heard his music.

“He played me a cassette tape of his four-track recordings, and it felt like some familiar album from my new favourite artist that I didn’t even know I had yet.”