Swellnet is a proud sponsor of the inaugural Sydney Surf Film Festival (SSFF), a two week celebration of surfing on celluloid. Over the next fortnight we'll be running interviews with the folk behind all the shortlisted feature films. Today it's the Argentinian gauchos del mar (look it up), brothers Julian and Joaquin Azulay, creators of 'Tierra de Patagones'.

Swellnet: Tell us a bit about yourself.
Julian and Joaquin: We are two Argentinian brothers born in a family with surf tradition since our dad was one of the pioneers of surfing in Argentina.

Julian is 28-years-old and Joaquin 27-years-old. Neither of us studied filmmaking. Julian is an architect and Joaquin a business administrator.

How did you get started in filmmaking and why? Did you study filmmaking formally or are you self-taught?
We started doing films 5 years ago when we decided to do a roadtrip from California to Argentina with a truck. Somehow we decided to shoot it. We thought that as it was a roadtrip that could be done once in a lifetime we should document it. And that is how we started learning about filmmaking.

How did your film come about?
After driving through a whole lot of the Pacific Coastline of the American Continent, we got back home and started thinking that we knew too much from other countries and too little from ours.  So we decided to go and explore the 3000 kilometres of coastline of the Patagonia.

Where do you look for inspiration?
I think we get our inspiration from the people we meet along the road, the nature and the landscapes we go through while camping and shooting our films.

How do you feel about your work being seen on the big screen?
It is certainly a great feeling, although during the first presentations it is always awkward and you feel a bit scared I guess. You have been working on a project for a long time, it is something very intimate and it is difficult to expose yourself to so many people. In our case we end up being the actors, directors, editors, and producers, so we have all the responsibility...

What equipment do you use?
Canon 5D, 6D, 7D plus GoPros

"You can have a great camera team and do amazing shots but if you don´t have a good story to tell it is just a sequence of beautiful images."

What do you think makes a good story? How do you set about translating that onto the screen? What is your starting point?
I think that part of it is finding stories that have something different. Be it for where you are shooting, who you are shooting, or when you are shooting. Or maybe even having a regular story, but told in a different way.  

In our case it is difficult to say how we translate it to the big screen because we usually leave with an idea of what we are going to shoot and as we leave with almost no plans that idea changes day by day. And in the end we come back home, and start rethinking how to tell the story with all of the stories we found along the way. Our starting point is just leaving home, setting a goal without too much plan. This way things come along in a more natural way.

How much of the process do you think is creative and how much do you think is technical?
Although the technical part is really important and it makes your story look much better, I think the creative part is 80% and the technical around 20%. You can have a great camera team and do amazing shots but in the end if you don´t have a good story to tell it is just a sequence of beautiful images. And people can watch them in a short film, but on feature films they get bored if they don´t have a story that traps them in some sort of way. 

Where do you see the future of surf filmmaking going?
I think that during the past years, and what we have been seeing at the surf film festivals, there are many people trying to tell stories of regular people that surf. Stories where people can empathise and feel part of if. Feel that they could be there.  

What piece of advice do you wish you’d been given when starting out as a filmmaker?
Buy a good tripod, you don´t want to be stabilising hundreds of shots!

For dates and times of all screenings visit the SSFF website.