Surf film history, restored and streaming.

Rescuing the films that shaped surfing

For a generation of surfers, these films were the stoke: Wave Warriors on a worn-out VHS tape, a Bystrom film at the local surf shop, Searching for Tom Curren on repeat. Most were shot on 16mm film and professional video, sold on VHS, then the original masters disappeared into closets and garages.

Derek Hoffmann started Nalu TV in February 2022 so people could stream the newly remastered Searching for Tom Curren, in memory of his friend Sonny Miller, together with his own film, Fiberglass and Megapixels. Larry Haynes’ Fluid Combustion films came next. From there Derek set out to visit friends from his years behind the camera, picking up their masters in person and bringing them back to the Nalu office in Mission Viejo.

We don’t work from old VHS copies. The films on Nalu TV come from the filmmakers’ own masters: the Betacam, U-matic three-quarter-inch and one-inch tapes, and the 16mm work prints the films were cut from. With filmmaker Richard Cheski helping to digitize, each master was scanned, cleaned up and restored, the same work that later led to the Nalu Film Foundation, the nonprofit that now carries on rescuing surf film archives.

Based in Hawaii and Southern California, we are a small team of surfers and filmmakers who believe this history deserves better than a dusty shelf.