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“This thing was all about, let’s make Momentum for the next generation,” said surf filmmaker/ podcaster/editor Vaughan Blakey. “It’s a full tip of the cap to a bunch of people who are all the same age, and they haven’t had a lot of spotlight on them. You always feel stronger as a group than you do on your own.”

The reference to Taylor Steele’s pivotal 1992 hit isn’t a way for Vaughan to inflate work into the pantheon of classic surf films. He has too much respect for surf history to do that. Rather, he and fellow editor Nick Pollet simply wanted to create a high-energy highlight reel with some of the best 18-and-under surfers on Rip Curl’s roster. In the new film Dunno , they hoped it would unite today’s groms with the same team-first attitude that provided momentum, if you will, for the Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, Shane Dorian and Taylor Knox crew in the 1990s. 

Vaughan and Nick, the creatives behind The Greatest Surf Movie in the Universe and many of your favorite Search films, sourced clips almost exclusively from parents filming on the beach. Another interesting thing about Dunno is that it features girls and guys surfing side by side for the duration of the film, which goes to show how high the level is across the board.  

“When I first started in surf mags, the Momentum was well and truly firing,” said Vaughan, a former editor of Surfing World Magazine. “The Mick, Joel and Dingo Cooly Kids era was just about to flare up. Junior surfing was huge in Australia and had heaps of money behind it. Rabbit (Bartholomew) was actually running the junior series and that was the first proper big-money injection into surfing. On the back of that, we had so much energy around kids ripping. Then you had Owen Wright and Julian Wilson come along, and everyone benefited for a good 20 years of junior surfing getting so much love. But when the money went pear-shaped and the industry nose-dived, one of the first things that got hammered was investments in junior surfing. And the team element disappeared with social media.”


Fourteen-year-old Tya Zebrowski is already competing (and winning) in Challenger Series events. Kody McGregor/World Surf League via Getty Images

So when the opportunity to uplift Rip Curl’s young talent arose, Vaughan’s brain immediately went to the part-based sections he had seen in the ‘90s. The film even has a soundtrack almost exclusively from young bands that match the groms’ energy in the water. 

The featured surfers include: Dane Henry, Lukas Skinner, Tya Zebrowski, Ziggy Mackenzie, Dylan Wilcoxen, Mitchell Peterson, Eden Walla, Matias Canhoto, Isla Huppatz, Ocean Lancaster, Hans Odriozola, Maria Eduarda, Lucas Cassity, Merrik Mochkatel, Zion Walla, and Willow Hardy. This roster has several Grom Search winners, Stab High champs and future CTers, no doubt. 

Dane Henry of Queensland, Australia, gets the deserved final section. The guy is insane in the air (remember this thing?), powerful on the rail and looks at ease standing tall in deep tubes. It’s freakish stuff. But Rip Curls’ stable runs deep. Watching pint-sized Zion Walla getting quadruple overhead tubes via stepoffs in Pascuales is also a treat. This frenetic 30 minutes is a reminder of just how unbelievable the kids are these days. On their own, it's impressive. Under one banner, it might just be a movement.

“That was kinda my favorite thing about this film,” Vaughan said. “Momentum workedand those guys became superstars because they were a team. They were a movement and I felt like these kids, maybe on the back of this, can feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves.”

This article first appeared on SURFER and was syndicated with permission.

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