Reelers 2017

words by ben stephens

Welcome to award season. It’s finally here. After busting ourselves over the last 12 months, it’s finally time to sit back watch the best in short films… Not from Tropfest, nor Flickerfest, but from the heavily clad-in-Corona-sponsorship, film festival that is Reelers.

From the creative, wild minds behind Coastal Watch’s Surfing World Magazine comes the only film festival awards night that you need to care about this March.

With three categories, Action, Story and Youth, Reelers will be celebrating the best in the amateur surf film scene across the entire globe. Crazy huh.

Let’s talk about the ilk that the flicks will be judge by because that’s kind of stupidly impressive.

Judging the Action side of things will be none other than Kai Neville – the award-winning film-maker behind the rad flicks like Cluster with Noa Deane and Dear Suburbia; that flick from four years ago that featured everyone that shreds.

Heading up the Story section will be Taylor Steele. Yep. The Taylor Steele. As in the dude that has created the best surf films of all time. Remember Mick Fanning’s movie Missing, that was Taylor. That piece of film that moved you. Also, a little birdy came by the other day and said that his next piece of surf film fuckery is going to be exactly that… we hear it drops sometime in May. We’ll let you know if we hear anything more.

Then looking after the Youth entries is the old timer, yet surf film legend Jack McCoy! The guy who made every one of us want to travel to the other side of the world in order to chase waves and capture them on film. He was the man behind the classic like Sabotaj, back when Burrow was a little grommet.

The evening of March 2, Moonlight Cinemas in Sydney will be playing host to the award ceremony. Kicking things off with a screening of the surf classic, Point Break – The OG one, not that shit one.

Sponsored by the good people at Corona, this will be an awards night that you’ll not want to miss out on.

Grab your tickets HERE and we’ll see you on the grass.

Goodluck to all the finalists!

Here are some finalists that we enjoyed: