I decided to start making surf films because I had grown up watching so many of them but I struggled to find DVDs or clips on Youtube in the mid 2000s that featured women surfers. I was frustrated as I sat down to watch yet another edit featuring Mick Fanning surfing perfect waves and living a life I could only dream of. It was before social media so my friends and I didn’t have access to the array of videos online now to watch and learn from. We watched Blue Crush a lot and Dear and Yonder was also a favourite.
When I finally had the opportunity to make my own surf films I resolved to focus on women and to do my best to work with women in production. That first project was Yama, which was set in Ghana and featured a pioneering group of female surfers and skaters, a project that led me to work with British filmmaker Maddie Meddings. We enjoyed the process so much, we were eager to get into a second project together to use the skills we had learned the first time around - Maddie also hadn’t worked on a longform project before she filmed and edited Yama.
So, in mid 2023 I recalled a post I’d seen from Pacha Light who had shared that she had returned to Ecuador, where she was born, on her eternal quest for identity. Pacha was born in Ecuador but grew up in Australia where she became a professional surfer. Her story came to the front of my mind when we were talking about ideas for the next film so when I saw Pacha at a screening of Yama I floated the idea. She came back with a resounding yes and thus, our team was formed.
It took six months of planning, going through our ideas on what to focus on, what our thread for the story would be, raising the money to cover our costs and planning everything - but by January 2024 we were in Ecuador.
We started in the Andes in Cotacachi which is where Pacha was born. Here we linked up with a childhood friend of Pacha’s, Muyu Flores, who guided us through a region that she loves - the Intag Valley. Intag is a cloud forest and one of the most biodiversity rich regions in the world. For 30 years it’s been under threat by mining corporations who have their eyes on the copper and other minerals below its rich earth surface. Muyu is indigenous to the northern Andes region and shared how the mining threats are constantly on her mind. In the depths of the forest in Intag is also a structure that remains that was built by Pacha’s mum, the house that Pacha spent the first years of her life in. Now, the land still sits under Pacha’s family’s ownership, protected for the moment from the companies coming in trying to destroy the land.
After the mountains we headed toward the coast. Ecuador’s southern coastline is arid and dotted with Ceibo trees with their big building trunks and gnarled fingers of branches spiking into the sky. We decided to name the film after these trees, as they are thought to connect the afterlife with this one and people are not allowed to cut them down in Ecuador. We visited Pacha’s family in the port city of Bahia De Caraquez and they took us up to Pacha’s father’s reserve, which is called Cerro Seco and is home to giant Ceibos reaching up into the sky. Here Pacha shared her journey of losing her father who died in 2021. It was around this time that she also decided to stop competing and left her major sponsor, sparking the quest that she then embarked on.
We then visited Montanita which is Ecuador’s main surf town and met up with Dominic "Mimi" Barona who is Ecuador’s most decorated surfer. Mimi represented Ecuador at the Tokyo Olympics and has paved the way for competitive surfing nationally. Mimi shared her journey from sleeping on the beach at her first international contest in Panama because she didn’t have enough money for a hotel to becoming Latin American Champion, travelling the world competing and becoming the first and only surfer to have represented Ecuador at the Olympics. Mimi has been through the whole journey with her brother Israel, but tragically in 2023 he passed away while competing in El Salvador. Mimi shared with us her struggles in coming to terms with his death but we were all struck by how strong she came across, how joyful she continued to be while dealing with the hardest period of her life.
From Montanita we headed along the coast in search of waves until we veered inland and over the mountains to reach the Rio Napo - a wide river that plunges from its headwaters in the mountains down into the Amazon Rainforest. Here we met up with Elizabeth Virkina Swanson Andi who is a part of the Kichwa community that is indigenous to the region. Elizabeth shared with us her relationship with the forest and the threats that it faces - the river her community depends on for food and water is being poisoned by upstream gold mining that is leaching heavy metals into this beautiful waterway. Elizabeth’s community faces a terrible challenge - do they stay and hope they’re ok? Or will they be forced to leave? Elizabeth generously guided us through the landscape and showed us the river, it was a beautiful but heartbreaking experience.
From here we headed out to the Galapagos Islands, small mounds in a grand blue Pacific Ocean. The Galapagos Islands are famous for their scientific value, but I had no idea just how beautiful they are. On the island of San Cristobal we met up with Carolina Pesantez who is a national park guide and surfer. We learnt about just how vulnerable to climate change the archipelago is and some of the problems they face with illegal fishing happening offshore. Between these important lessons of conservation we surfed the swells that collided with the rocky shorelines and we dove among sea lions and an abundance of sea life. Despite the issues in the ocean, the Galapagos has some moments of hope, with its land based conservation programs working to restore the populations of endemic creatures that populate these arid lands. It was truly beautiful to experience.
Finally, we headed back to Quito and onward to our respective homes. We have spent the year since working on putting the film together, sharing these stories that I wished I had the chance to watch when I was a teenager searching for inspiration.
Ceibo is a feature length film, made by an all female cast and crew and will premiere in Sydney on April 8th followed by a national tour and a tour of the UK in late April. We then hope to bring the film to the US and return to Ecuador.
Lucy Small is an Australian surfer, activist, writer and filmmaker. In 2021 Lucy hit headlines for calling out the organizers of a Sydney surf contest for awarding less than half of the prize money to the women’s division than the men’s division in a viral moment that sparked changes across the world of surfing. Since then, Lucy has worked to share the stories of women’s surfing, having premiered her debut film Yama in 2023 featuring a pioneering group of female surfers and skaters in Ghana that she made together with Maddie Meddings. Lucy’s new film Ceibo is the second project Lucy and Maddie have worked on together. Lucy now resided in Biarritz, France.
All photos by Maggie Meddings
Ceibo website
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