Death of Surf Film Maker Chris Bystrom
Robert R Feigel
Chris Bystrom in Australia. Chris was killed in a head-on crash with a
semitrailer truck on a notoriously dangerous stretch of Pacific Highway,
five kilometres north of Murwillumbah in NSW just before 7:00am AEST on
Friday.
Perhaps best known for his numerous surfing movies, Chris was also the
former publisher/editor of Pacific Longboarder magazine and the owner of
Retro Groove Surf Shop in Coolangatta. Chris, who turned 50 last year,
is survived by his twelve year old son.
Chris was a good mate, a great guy and a much respected colleague who
will be missed by all those who had the pleasure of knowing him. Via con
Dios, mi amigo.
Driver killed in head-on with semi
There has been a fatal accident on the Pacific Highway on the New South
Wales' north coast.
Police say the accident, five kilometres north of Murwillumbah, closed
the highway.
They say a car and an Australia Post semitrailer collided head on just
before 7:00am AEST.
The driver of the car was killed in the accident.
They say debris and fuel has been strewn across the road.
Traffic was diverted through Terranora and Mooball.
Robert R Feigel
THE PASSING OF A BRAINSTORM
Film-maker Chris Bystrom killed in car crash
May 5, 2001 Northern NSW, Australia:Friends, colleagues, and fans of
surf movies generally will be shocked and saddened to hear that Chris
Bystrom -- maker of the legendary Blazing Boards video series -- died
yesterday in a car accident near Mooball, Australia. He was 51.
Eyewitnesses reported that Bystrom's vehicle was travelling along the
Pacific Highway on the far north coast of New South Wales at around 7
a.m. Friday Australian time, when it swerved into oncoming traffic,
hitting a semi-trailer head-on. Bystrom was killed instantly.
Business rivals and buddies alike were quick to pay homage to the
multi-faceted lensman, who in recent years had dived into the renaissant
world of longboarding, kickstarting Pacific Longboarder magazine and
making a series of longboard videos. "Everyone's been calling to tell
me," said Darryl Barnett, manager of Retro Groove, Bystrom's surf
culture store-cum-museum. "It's been a huge shock ... (Chris) was quite
a classic."
"He was ahead of his time in lots of ways," said Australian Longboarding
magazine editor Shane Peel, who fought circulation battles against
Bystrom for much of the 1990s. "He saw the longboarding scene coming
almost before it'd started, then he could see the trend toward
mid-length boards and nostalgia. He was someone who put a real lot into
surfing."
Originally of San Diego, Bystrom had been living in Australia for nearly
20 years, settling in Elanora just south of the Queensland Gold Coast
and enjoying what he saw as the country's similarity with an older
Californian landscape. Before the move, he'd attended UCSD film school,
and was a stickler for shooting 16-mm film stock rather than video. This
may have been one reason why the Blazing Boards series was such a hit
through the mid-'80s -- along with the fact that it featured some of
Mark Occhilupo's and Tom Curren's most dazzling surfing of the time.
Great surfers of today, Rob Machado and Shane Dorian among them, were
hugely influenced by whaht they saw in BB and nominate it regularly
among their favorite surf films. "He was aware that those guys liked his
movies," says Barnett, "and he was proud of that."
Other movies included Madmen '93 and Gravity Sucks, which featured the
first internationally shown footage of Maverick's (shot by California's
Steve Spaulding).
In the mid-1990s, wanting to try something new, Bystrom began publishing
Pacific Longboarder -- the only surf magazine to deliberately base
itself around an actual ocean, not a nation. PL ran material from
Australia's east coast, Hawaii, California, and anywhere else with a
Pacific coastline. It borrowed heavily in format from Steve Pezman's
Surfer's Journal, but a hint to its owner's individuality and serious
nature could be found in the cover tagline: "A Beacon of Truth,
Controversy and Artistic Expression." This was years after Bystrom been
given the affectionate nickname "Brainstorm" by media colleagues.
PL blazed some new trails in Australian surf publishing, but ran into
money problems in 1999 when the competition began hotting up, and was
eventually sold (it is still being published). "After (Chris) lost his
magazine he got a little bit depressed," says Barnett. "But he was very
happy with the shop." After opening in March 2000, Retro Groove has gone
on to become a surf cultural center and a focus for surfboard collectors
around Australia.