[ ALBE FALZON INTERVIEW ]

ALBE FALZON - THE ART OF LIFE

From Morning of the Earth to the meaning of life, film maker Albe Falzon has followed his own path

By Tim Baker

When Albe Falzon was honoured at the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame awards in 2006, it was more than 30 years since the release of his classic surf movie, “Morning of the Earth.”

Surfing had moved on, become big business and a high profile professional sport, but Albe still looked like he’d walked straight off the set of his great country soul surf flick. He couldn’t be lured from his quiet country retreat for the bright lights of the awards night at a fashionable beachside resort, and appeared instead via a video greeting. Sitting on the verandah of his charming renovated farm house, patting a kangaroo that was seated peacefully at his side, Albe thanked all for the acknowledgement and apologised that he had many pressing commitments that kept him busy at the farm house. “Like feeding kangaroos,” he grinned.

Albe had been given The Surfing Hall of Fame Lifestyle Award, which honours those who best represent and contribute to Australian surfing’s culture and lifestyle. He had earned this honour by doing what he has always done - surfing, making art, and living life at his own designated, gentle pace, taking time to smell the flowers and appreciate the great natural playground he inhabits.

Albe is enjoying a whole new bout of recognition as surfing’s retro fashion trend gathers steam, and a new generation of surfers look back to the early ‘70s as a time of magic and inspiration - of radical new design experiments and easy country living before crowds and the coastal real estate boom transformed our beaches.

The music, the look, the surfboards are all back in fashion among a generation of surfers weary of fast-edited thrash/punk surf flicks and earnest battles in pro surfing competition.

“Getting back to where it all begun

Life was simple, no rip off people

And it was fun.”

So goes the soundtrack to Morning of the Earth, and while many of us are trying to recapture that innocent approach to life, Albe has never left it.

TB: What was your childhood like, where did you grow up, how did you get into surfing? What did your parents do for work? Any early artistic and surfing influences?

AF: Until I was 8 years old I lived in Redfern, an inner city suburb of Sydney. My parents were working class and poor. We shared a three storey building with other relatives. It was like an inner city commune. My grandmother owned three three storey buildings together and each family related to us had their own apartment. On Sunday we would all eat lunch together. Even though we were poor everyone seemed to help each other and we all got along OK. My father was never home. He worked during the day and played piano most nights to supplement our income. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather. He always had time for me and we shared many memorable times together. He loved to swim and one day he took me to the beach by tram. He would always go to the ocean pool on the weekends and swim. He showed me the ocean for the first time and taught me to swim. He always had classical music playing in his apartment. I think it was the ABC radio station. The first music I even heard came from his apartment. He loved music and played an assortment of instruments - violin, mandolin, harmonica and piano. I remember seeing a bust of Mozart in his room and an old wind up gramophone. I spent many hours each day with him, he was always showing me things. He also introduced me to the garden. Where we lived was like a concrete jungle, however he had this small plot of dirt about three square metres and every summer would plant dahlia's and after they were finished he would dig up the bulbs and store them in a dark place until next year. When he immigrated from Malta - well actually he stowed away when he was 17 - and arrived in Sydney he couldn't speak a word of English. He was an enormous influence. He set me up for the rest of my life. I was with him when he died. I was 10 years old. We’d go up to the Entrance (north of Sydney). We were living in this kind of commune, all the relatives, everyone moved together, went on holidays together, lived together. We went down to one of those ocean pools. It was a fantastic beautiful day, crystal clear blue sky. They were talking about somebody who had died and then he said, I’m going in for my last swim. He used to swim with this beautiful classical style. He got in the pool and swam half a dozen laps. When he got back to the group he said, pass me the towel, then just as he picked it up, he died of a heart attack. It was really upsetting, he was my best friend. I was only 10 years old. But it was only later I realised how blessed he was. He was doing something he loved, it was a beautiful day, swimming in the pool, got out and died. He was an incredibly harmless, really beautiful man. My mother said, he was just a gem of a man. He always was there for me, always had time. The Buddha says, you never know what’s going to come next, your next breath or your next life. That was a really incredible moment. I look back at it now and think how blessed he was. He died the way he lived.

Did you want to make films or magazines primarily. Which came first?

I always had a camera close by. I started taking surfing photos when I was about 15. At the same time I was fortunate to get work in a camera store. The owner didn't really want to be there, he wanted to go bush and paint so I ended up taking care of the shop. He allowed me to borrow a camera with a telephoto lens - that was pretty much the start of my journey as a photographer. He also installed a dark room at the back of the shop so I was able to process and print my own pictures. God knows how many people walked into the shop and out without me knowing. I spent hours in the dark room every day. Taught myself how to develop negatives and print pictures. About the same time I met Bob Evans when one night in passing through the town he showed a Bud Browne film to a small group of locals. It was fantastic to see the big surf on the North Shore and Dewey Weber and Mike Doyle surfing the backwash at Makaha. I guess that's when I really got the film bug, although I had been filming some 8mm surfing prior to that. There really wasn't much separating the still and movie direction - I just wanted to film surfing.

Are there any interesting yarns about the genesis of the movie Morning of the Earth? I know there's a nice one about the nuns.

Well I did meet some nuns one day when I was doing a small publishing job for them and they asked me what I really wanted to do and I told them that I just wanted to make a beautiful film on surfing and they said, well just go and do it! A few years later that's exactly what happened. I guess one of the most interesting questions some people have put to me over the past was where did the title come from. When we started filming we had no idea what we were doing....There was no plan or story board or any type of projection whatsoever. We just kind of made it up as we went. We were really just filming the way we were living. I had a real drawing towards the north coast. I had travelled up to those great point breaks with Bob Evans when he was filming. Often I would travel with him and take still photographs for his magazine Surfing World. I always felt a real attraction to the north coast especially in winter when the westerlies would blow and the days were like crystal - all I wanted to do was head north and surf some of those classic north coast point waves. So that's where we filmed most of the Australian sequences. Then one day David Elfick said that we should go to Asia - he heard from Russell Hughes that there was good surf in Bali. Up until then I had no desire to go to Asia. We were more focused on the Hawaiian Islands - that was every surfer’s dream to head to the Islands and ride Sunset. We had some free contra airline tickets and off we went to Bali - which was just fantastic. When we were there Kuta was a small village with dirt roads and plenty of farm activity and animals everywhere. Hardly any tourists - just a few German hippies. We stayed in Bali for about three weeks -for the first week we just surfed the beach breaks at Kuta and Kuta reef. After we discovered Uluwatu and the great waves out there we made several trips to Ulu's and surfed those waves. Once back in Australia and we viewed the film we started thinking about the title and we came up with "The Morning of the World" which is how the Indian prime minister described Bali - he said that Bali was so beautiful it was like "The Morning of the World" - so we changed the title a bit and called the film "Morning of the Earth" .

What were the highlights of the actual experience of making Morning of the Earth?

There were so many magic times in filming "Morning of the Earth" - pretty much most of the time was great. I guess that's why the film holds up today. There were no dramas or ill feelings, it all just seemed to unfold as if it was meant to be that way. Certainly there were memorable highlights. Travelling up the coast with Stephen and Baddy was a real hoot. We would be pissing ourselves laughing. Often we would just pull into some isolated beach, light a fire and sleep out under the stars - wake up next morning to see perfect small waves and no one anywhere. Hanging out at Anga in those old farm houses and surfing the point was too good. Baddy just stayed there - he was so on the money. He realised that it was too good to go anywhere else and today 35 years later he's still there. It was like he understood there and then that this was as good as life was going to get - he was right. Most people are thinking that life will be better if they have a bigger house or new girlfriend or the latest car. Baddy in his own way knew that that wasn't the case. And whilst everyone was out there chasing their tails he just paddled out at Anga, dropped into another perfect wave and blissed out. Filming on the cliff top overlooking Uluwatu with Stephen and Rusty surfing there for the first time and a couple of hundred natives yelling every time they took off was pretty amazing. They hadn't seen surfers before and it was like the entire village was there observing, transfixed on these surfers riding waves. We stayed out there overnight on the full moon, lit a fire and watched 8 to 10 foot sets break on the reef under the glow of the silvery moon. Rusty played his guitar, there were a few fisherman nearby - we didn't have a care in the world and knew that the next day was just going to be magic. I think that's one night we all hold close to our hearts. All the other stuff that happens between those moments is sort of meaningless when you have such pure experiences like that. That's what life's about and when you have those profound experiences you are so elevated with life that's it's really hard to relate to the more mundane aspects of your day to day existence. It's like once that level has been set you try and keep everything you do in life moving towards that goal.

How did the soundtrack come about?

David Elfick was the editor of a music magazine before we started Tracks. His experience in the music world was significant as a result. As the film started to take shape he was researching the music possibilities. He met a young talented producer/musician - G Wayne Thomas who also had his finger on the music pulse at the time. They pooled their talents and resources and pretty soon we had sequences of the film going out to various musicians around town. They would watch the sequences and start composing songs that were appropriate. Some of the bands were into surfing. Pretty soon we were getting the music beds together and eventually had our original soundtrack. David and Wayne both wanted the original score to be a reflection of the music of the time. It worked really well and was instrumental in the film’s success. By today’s standards some of the tracks are still classics. The title track Morning of the Earth is really a beautiful song.

"There's no formula for happiness that's guaranteed to work, all depends on how you treat your friends to how much you get hurt, but it's a start when you open up your heart, give your love to others, they become your brothers, when you open up your heart".

What have been some of your other favourite film projects and related stories?

Bali has always been kind to me. Since filming Morning of the Earth I have been back to Bali 30 or 40 times - I've lost count. It's always been a special place. I love the Balinese people. They have a real magic quality about them that goes beyond words. It's as if they absolutely understand where you are coming from without you saying a word....They appear to be highly intuitive and are a remarkable race of spiritual people. Someone once said to me that if the world went down and the only people remaining were the Tibetans and the Balinese then the new civilisation would be off to a good start. I couldn't agree more. A few years ago I had the great fortune to meet Chris Blackwell in Bali. He was the founder of Island records - Bob Marley and U2 were on his label as well as many other incredible artists. At the time of meeting Chris I had no idea who he was. A few days later he went down with food poisoning and we helped him through a pretty traumatic time. When he recovered and was leaving the island he gave me all his phone numbers - about 25 and said that if I ever get near Jamaica call him. A year or so later we went to America and I faxed him saying that we would be in the U.S. He immediately faxed back and invited us to Jamaica. Well I could pretty much write a book on our experiences in Jamaica....Anyhow we were met at the airport and driven to a place called "Golden Eye," an amazing traditional house overlooking this beautiful small private beach. The house belonged to Ian Fleming and Chris had bought the place when Fleming died. The original furniture was still there. He wrote most of the James Bond books in a small gazebo overlooking the beach - Golden Eye being one of them. Chris was very active in the Jamaican music scene. He supported so many groups. He also was a traditionalist when it came to documenting the original sounds of Jamaican music. One of the dying traditions was the dance hall music. There were numerous dance hall clubs all over Jamaica - some in the middle of the jungle. They played this deep bass throbbing reggae dance music and often had go go girls dancing to these raw sounds. Chris was very persuasive and we ended up making a film for him "Jamaican Go Go". It was totally radical. We would cruise Jamaica at night between 11PM to 4AM and seek out these clubs and film and record the music. We drove around in an old chevy - our driver was a rastarfarian who always had a giant joint in tow. The producer was this washed up eccentric English artist who loved a drink, dressed like a dandy and was totally captivated by go go girls. He lived in a beautiful old plantation house overlooking the ocean and had two old Jamaican women who took care of everything for him and made amazing meals which we ate on a silver service white tablecloth. The film was pretty raunchy - Chris loved it. His R&R people thought that he had lost the plot. One night when we were with him in his farmhouse in England he was flying out to Paris to see Sade. He said as he was walking out quite casually, get your next project together - so we went to Bali and made "You can’t step twice on the same piece of water"

How did the series, Festivals of the world, come about?

After filming Morning of the Earth and then falling out with David Elfick over Crystal Voyager, I kind of wandered for a few years a bit lost in the world. I found myself in India filming the great Kumbha Mela festival. A giant gathering of holy men and pilgrims from all over India who come together on one of four sacred rivers of India every four years for a month long festival. More than 20 million people attend. It's pretty daunting even for a hardened Indian traveller - which I wasn't. We also travelled to Kashmir - a truly beautiful garden state. We ended up making a 90 minute program with Talking Heads and Brian Eno's music as narrative. It's a pretty abstract film - didn't get much of a release. However it did help us get a series of festivals of the far east films together which took us to some amazing places, Tibet being one of them. That led on to another series of programs for television called "Festivals of the World"

What about Globus - how did that come about, what was the intent, and how has it been received?

Bruce Raymond connected Jeff Hornbaker and myself. He said that we had so much in common creatively and he thought the chemistry would work. He was right, we got on really well. I spent some time with Jeff in G-Land and in Hawaii. He was always filming. When on location for Quiksilver after doing their advertising campaigns he would go off and film some pretty amazing imagery and gradually over a few years had accumulated all this incredible footage. I also had quite a library of images from my "Festivals of the Far East" and "Festivals of the World" television series. So we combined our work and ended up making Globus. It is essentially Jeff's film. I had a few sequences in there, it was mainly Jeff's work, however we helped him creatively put the pieces together and secure rights for the music tracks. I think Jeff wanted to make a "spiritual" film - a view of the world from a spiritual perspective. Most of the photography he had been doing was straight advertising campaigns selling clothes and stuff. There's only so much of that you can do. He wanted to go further and Globus was to be his showpiece. I think the film is really special. It has a vision that is probably not in sync with the mainstream, however in time more people will come around to those type of films. Films that give some deeper meaning to life - that focus on a holistic pattern to our lives.

You seem to have an interest in Buddhism. Are there any other philosophies that inform your lifestyle? Can you describe your lifestyle where you live now?

Presently I live on a property about six hours’ drive north of Sydney. I've had the house for about 30 years but only have lived here permanently for the past ten years. I am about 15 minutes’ drive from empty, picturesque, undeveloped beaches that have good point breaks and beach breaks most of the year. Not many surfers, just a bunch of friendly locals who always seem to be out in the water when it’s good. Some I hardly see on land and I've known them for 10 or 15 years. I usually start my day by feeding wallabies that are waiting on the verandah most mornings, then I feed my rabbits - they seem to be multiplying by the day. The house is surrounded by gardens and trees and is a perfect environment for these beautiful harmless friends. If the surf is really good I get up an hour earlier, usually in the dark and prepare their food before I go surfing. When I wander around and see them I think that it's the same life that goes through them that goes through me - it's the same life and I think how perfect that life is.......Sometimes it takes animals or other life forms to consolidate that understanding. We live in a world that is so focused on ourselves, our achievements, our ambitions, our successes that in today’s modern world we lose sight of others - people and animals and nature. Living where I do constantly reminds me of the true values of life and its most profound and beautiful aspects. Harmlessness is a quality that I try to practice moment by moment. When I wander around the wallabies and rabbits and listen to the birds I am constantly reminded in a very natural way how harmless they are. I named one of the rabbits a few days ago - called her "Lama". She is the embodiment of harmlessness and so incredibly beautiful.........It's as if she is a reincarnation of a wise old soul. Who would have ever thought that a small white rabbit could be such a great teacher.

What do you think surfing's lessons are? What has it taught you?

Surfing has taught me to let go. Whether it’s "letting go" of mental stuff when you paddle out or "letting go" when the wave decides to make the call and just when you think its all Ok you're being pitched. I am also constantly reminded how beautiful surfing is and how fortunate we are to be able to surf. Most people on the planet will never see the ocean, amazing when you think that the planet is mostly water and of the 6 billion people who share this world only a handful will ever see the ocean. And we as surfers are having fun and enjoying its abundance. When I go to the ocean every day I give thanks a thousand fold for being one of those fortunate few who surf. I really think that I'm a much better human being because I surf. I absolutely appreciate my good fortune and wherever possible on a daily basis I try and give to others in some way what the ocean has given to me. The subtle beauty of being in the ocean at sunrise and sharing those experiences with your friends - the absolute fulfilment you get from surfing is a gift - a window to a world most people can’t imagine and will never see. It's up to us to use that in a way that will benefit others. Experience is to be shared, especially if there can be benefit from your experience, that’s about as good as life’s going to get. I live a pretty idyllic life here. I’m isolated in a lot of ways but I feel really connected. Through the isolation I feel I’m connected to the things that are real, the real issues that are important to our lives. I sit up at this idyllic place and go surfing and have a quiet life. You can’t really be responsible for what’s going on outside of your experience. You can feel compassion for the world, but all you can do is be responsible for how you think and feel within yourself. Being here in this place and being isolated, I can turn on the TV and watch it, but I have to be really careful not to get emotionally involved. If I maintain a certain calmness within myself then that is going to go out into the world. I can make a greater contribution being at peace within myself here. Everyone emits energy ... We’re a form of energy and we emit this energy out. You might think you’re not doing anything by being isolated here but if you maintain a certain consciousness, that’s going to go out. Clarity of vision within myself, that’s pretty much where I’m at now. Eventually you come together to a sense of purpose in your life. I think in a way I kind of had that early. I was aware of that when I made the film. Even though I didn’t have a story board, underneath it I had a sense of those values - make something really simple, something really beautiful, and make something that’s going to reach out to people. That’s pretty much the essence of it.

What do you think of the state of the world at this time? I think there’s going to be a really big wakeup call and maybe nature’s going to do it. Something’s going to come down because materialism’s out of control. I think that’s something we’re going to witness. I think we’ve got lessons to learn. Usually it’s only in a crisis people change ... The footprint that Australians are leaving is pretty irresponsible. I just see that as really dangerous. People have no sense of reality. They are born into this artificial affluence. I think it’s going to be interesting to see how it unfolds. There will be some major changes. That’s why I live here in a way. I try to live a fairly sustainable life, and don’t use any more than I need. I think the surfing industry is grossly irresponsible, in the way they market stuff to the young people. They’ve created this huge monster.