Título original: Riding Giants
Año: 2004
País:  USA
Duración: 105 min
Estreno en España: 2004
Estreno en USA: 2004
Director: Stacy Peralta
Reparto: Laird Hamilton, Greg Noll, Jeff Clark, Darrick Doerner, Dave Kalama, Brian L. Keaulana, Titus Kinimaka 
Productora: Sony Pictures Classics
Género: Documental
DVDRIP
VO with English Subs

Riding Giants is a documentary film in the same vein as Dogtown and Z-Boys, this time exploring the lives and passions of big-wave surfers from around the globe, though centering primarily on three epochs of big-wave surfing as seen through the eyes of their chief proponents. These epochs being early big-wave discovery on the North Shore with Greg Noll, the discovery of Maverick's with Jeff Clark, and the tow-in revolution with Laird Hamilton. Given the recent rash of mainstream media attention devoted to surfing (and big-wave surfing in particular), it's nice to have a surfer's story told by surfers themselves. For their part, George and Peralta took painstaking effort not to sensationalize or dramatize the already dramatic act of riding big surf, opting instead to allow the surfers to tell the story. "We've tried to infuse the story with the freedom of surfing," says my editor and soon-to-be Hollywood bigwig Sam George. "Big-wave riding is the backdrop against which the story of surfing is told in this movie," he says, adding that the greatest compliment he received at Sundance '04 was that most attending surfers said that the movie made them proud to be surfers.

An impressively thorough history results from this film, one that maddened George in the writing as he struggled to punctuate such an exhaustive history in the confining space of a one-and-a-half hour film. But from lost footage of Greg Noll's epic day at Makaha, through Clark's pioneering at Maverick's to the most cutting-edge views of Hamilton and towing at Peahi, the film is said to be as representative a surf film as possible.
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'Riding Giants' recorre la historia del surf, desde sus primeras raíces en Polinesia hasta el desarrollo de la nueva cultura del surf en toda la costa de California del Sur, durante los años 40. Reuniendo imágenes de archivo y entrevistas exclusivas, Peralta nos ofrece una mirada al mundo interior de unos extraordinarios aventureros: surfistas que, no satisfechos con los aspectos más recreativos y sociales de este deporte, empiezan a buscar olas cada vez mayores, saltos más peligrosos y un mayor sentido de la libertad, para explorar las posibilidades del surf. 

'Riding Giants' es la historia del jinete de la gran ola. En ella, están los impetuosos pioneros de la vieja escuela, como Greg Noll, apodado 'The Bull' (El Toro) por su estilo y determinación para cabalgar sobre bestias oceánicas capaces de cubrir a pueblos enteros. Después está Jeff Clark, el Maverick de California del Norte, que incapaz de convencer a nadie de su existencia, estuvo surfeando como guerrero en solitario durante toda una década. Y finalmente, Peralta nos presenta al legendario Laird Hamilton, que como indiscutible campeón de la gran ola, es mencionado por la mayoría de los estadistas del surf, como el mayor cazador de adrenalina que jamás haya existido. 

Para los que os haya gustado Dogtown and Z-boys aquí os dejo otro fantástico documental de Stacy Peralta esta vez sobre el surf. Las imágenes y la BSO valen la pena. No os lo perdais