Freediving Movies and Documentaries

[sharkvin]

Hi Everyone,

I have compiled a list(although not many) of freediving movies, documentaries and competitions for all who are interested or curious of this wonderful sport. Please feel free to add to my lists if I have left out any.

Documentaries:
1) FreeDive - a 2005 made for TV documetary about Tanya Streeter training a novice diver to compete in freediving competitions

2) Ocean Men - Extreme Dive - A documentary featuring the rival freedivers o their time Pipin and Umberto.

3) Yasemin Dalkilic – World Deepest Woman - A documentary about Yasemin and her training schedules right up to her record breaking day.

4) Freediver's blues, A freediver story - (no info yet)

Movies:
1) Le Grandbleu aka The Big Blue - Movie about the rivalry of legendary freedivers Enzo and Jacques.

2) Into The Blue - Movie released in 2005 about scuba and freedivers recovering sunken treasure.

3) The Free Diver - a 2004 movie about freedivers achieving their goals

4) The Dive - Still in production and scheduled to release in 2008. It features the love story of Pipin and Audrey and is directed by Titanic's genius director James Cameron himself.


Competitions:
1) The Aida 2004 World Freediving championship recorded on DVD by producer Goh Iramoto


Hope everyone finds this useful and informative.

:friday sharkvin

 

[Stephan Whelan]

Good list - here are some more:

Documentaries

5) Cayman 2004 - PFI World Record Attempts

6) Cayman Down (2005) - PFI World Record Attempts

7) Caymam 2006: Sink Faze - PFI World Record Attempts (Due mid 2006)

8) Briseno Docu (Will find exact name later) 2005 - Followed Annabel Briseno on her world record attempts. Narrated by Tanya Streeter

9) Various Tanya Streeter Docu's (full list to follow)

 

[DeepThought]

How about adding books? non-fiction (like pelizzari's manual) and fiction like Arthur C. Clarke's 'Dolphin Island' (has some amount of skin diving in it).
And someone will probably ask for spearfishing movies as well.

 

[SanSan]

I for myself would eliminate "into the blue" from the first list because for its just another hollywood action film with some nice UW scenes and nothing more.

Would add The greater meaning of water. The premier is due to be on April 22nd. http://www.gmwmovie.com/ I have a feeling this is going to be a realy nice movie about freediving. I sure hope so.

 

[Stephan Whelan]

Documentaries

10) Sony FreeDiver Open Classic 2003

11) OceanMen TV Docu (as opposed to the IMAX version both are very different)

 

[jome]

There was the television series with Stig Severinsen (which I haven't seen) and I'd also mention "The Deep Breath", a documentary about Topi Lintukangas and his world record attempt in 2005

 

[DeepThought]

Saw a national geographic doccumentry about Trevor Hutton trying to breake the FI record for 78m or so in cyprus.
It was before I ever heard about freediving and I thought this guy is crazy.
I don't know the program's name.

 

[SanSan]

Jeah I also saw the docu about Trevor. A good one.

There is also a docu out with Patric Musimu and his 209m nolimits.

I hope the docu with Tom Sietas on his Mission to Blue will air soon.

 

[trux]

There was a documentary "Free Diving" [sic] about the Pacific Cup 2002 in Hawaii, shot by Miroslav Hrdý for the Czech TV (starring Martin Stepanek and the Czech freediving team, of course). Unfortunately I did not find it anywhere for download - there is just a brief information in Czech on this page:

http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/program/detail.php?idp=1111298713

 

[trux]

There was also the famous Russian (eh.. actually Soviet) film The Amphibian Man by Vladimir Chebotaryov & Genadij Kazansky from 1961 (!). I saw it when I was 6 and it marked me for all the life - I think it was one of the reasons I started with freediving (although it was not called so in the time I did).

I really loved the film that we went to see with the school class (it was mandatory to attend Soviet propaganda films regularly) - you can imagine it had to be really an exceptional film if I loved it in spite of it, because in that time, being under the Soviet occupation, we deeply hated everything coming from the USSR, and especially all those Soviet films that we were fed with.

I never saw it again since that time - just remembered it now, seeing this thread, and looked it up on the Internet - I'll have to order it and watch again (on the link above, it is available on DVD for $22), but I am little bit afraid to be disappointed - it remains just too beautiful in the distant memories.

 

[island_sands]

There was also the famous Russian (eh.. actually Soviet) film The Amphibian Man by Vladimir Chebotaryov & Genadij Kazansky from 1961 (!). I saw it when I was 6 and it marked me for all the life - I think it was one of the reasons I started with freediving (although it was not called so in the time I did).

looks like a great story, one of those romantic sea classics

 

[trux]

BTW, in the film description they write: "Actor Vladimir Korenev was doubled by the USSR underwater swimming champion Rem Stukalov". I tried to find more information about him, because I wonder what disciplines and what performances he did - it would be interesting to know what freediving was like at the end of 50's and beginning of 60's in the USSR. Unfortunately a brief googling did not reveal any results except of references to this film.

EDIT: I found another link with much longer description of the film:
http://twtd.bluemountains.net.au/Rick/am.htm

EDIT: there are some pictures from the film here:

 

[trux]

I found another "freediving" film - it is a German film shot by Farhad Yawari (Iranian) in 1991 called Dolphins. There is a brief English description here and long one in German with many pictures here. I think you can order the film on a DVD on the second link.

I am attaching some pictures to convince you that the film is indeed attractive (unfortunately I did not see it myself yet) More pictures available here

 

[SanSan]

I don't think Dlophins is a freediving film. Acutaly the german description says some diving scenes are in the beginning to symbolise the start of life and so on. The story is about a traumatised girl held in a psyhiatric clinic...

 

[trux]

I don't think Dlophins is a freediving film.

It depends how exactly you define "freediving". If you speak just about the sport discipline, then you are right - certainly none of the films I mentioned speaks about freedivng competitions, trainings, or techniques. However, the main motive of both films is diving free of air tanks, and both films contain considerable deal of underwater apnea/freedive scenes. I do not know if trained freedivers participated in Dolphins, but I guess that Rem Sukalow "underwater swimming champion" who dubbed the UW scenes of amphibian man, can be definitely considered a freediver, although in 1961 the term was not used yet, and AIDA did not exist.

If you consider both films completely off-topic, then I apologize for my posts. Though, for me personally, freediving is first of all the marvelous feeling beeing underwater as little limited with equipment as possible, and only secondary it is a sport discipline, and the record hunting is even less important to me. And that's why I indeed consider both films very much on-topic and would expect that other people passionate with freediving would appreciate knowing about them too.

 

[SanSan]

I dont consider freediving as a sport discipline only... I just wanted to point out that I think that this film isn't about freediving. There are some freediving sceenes in it but I dont think the topic of the film is diving and I also don't think there is much talk about diving in it. Of course I haven't seen the film so I could be wrong. My opinion is based on description a read. I think the diving scenes are used only for symbolizing begginning of life and such things. But as I said i have not seen the film.

 

[trux]

I think the diving scenes are used only for symbolizing begginning of life and such things. But as I said i have not seen the film.

Yes, you are right, the film is not about freediving as such. It is indeed about a psychically ill girl, whose dreams - the underwater scenes, create big part of the short film (45min only). However, I ordered the [ame="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004SU12/truxoft-20?creative=327641&camp=14573&adid=1YXVG2BS70JPB685PTXM&link_code=as1"]DVD[/ame], so will be able to tell you better later

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004SU12/truxoft-20?creative=327641&camp=14573&adid=1YXVG2BS70JPB685PTXM&link_code=as1"]

[/ame]​

 

[Boomstick]

It depends on what elements your looking for?
Breath-hold diving or 'proper' freediving, in which case I enjoyed the underwater scenes in 'Alien Resurrection' and 'The Abyss', also the 'making of' on the DVD of 'Into the Blue' is really worth watching as I think it's better than the actual film

 

[SanderP]

also the 'making of' on the DVD of 'Into the Blue' is really worth watching as I think it's better than the actual film

How long is the making-of feature?

 

[BennyB]

also the 'making of' on the DVD of 'Into the Blue' is really worth watching

Agree entirely. Very refreshing to see movie directors and stars talk about freediving in a way that is not completely over the top, and to see their exuberance about the subject. And to hear Jessica Alba say " I can hold my breath forever...." Grrr!:inlove