Mickey Smith Wins Short Stories 2010

"If your life is spent observing and documenting, are you ever really present?"

It's been seen over a million times and been called 'the best thing on the internet' by one or two impassioned commentators

No surprise, then, that Mickey Smith scooped gold at the first ever Short Stories awards at the Relentless Garage for his remarkable film, The Dark Side Of The Lens.

Searching for shots

Smith worked with Allan Wilson (director of photography) from the Astray Collective to present a side to surfing that few of us, as observers or surfers, will ever glimpse: the life of the photographer. What drives people like him to spend countless hours in cold and hostile waters in search of a single shot?

"I wanted to create that something that would give insight into what it takes to grind out a living as a water-based photographer in the surfing industry," Smith explains, "to provide a short, experimental glimpse into life lived in the shadow of what is, for me, an obsessive pursuit."

There is an interesting sub-text to the film, too. If your life is spent simply observing and documenting what you see, are you ever really present? It's this willingness to go unnoticed, to hide in the shadows and sacrifice personal notoriety for the sake of one's art, that remains a hallmark of the very best 'watermen'. And as evidenced by this film, Mickey Smith is no exception.

Winning awards

Besides Short Stories, Mickey's film has won Best Film at the New York Surf Film Festival, Best International Short at the inaugural Canadian Surf Film Festival and Digital Short of the Year at the star-studded Surfer Poll Awards. Our congratulations go out to him, not least for seeing off stiff competition from the other Short Stories contenders.

Short Stories will return in 2011 with a simple challenge to filmmakers: to raise the bar higher than Mickey managed with Dark Side Of The Lens and create a film based on the virtue of 'focus'. Easy.

Until then…