by CHRIS BARRY

Move over, Moondoggie, with Riding Giants skater-surfboarder-turned-award-winning California documentary filmmaker Stacy Peralta is finally setting the record straight re: the sport/cultural phenomena that is surfboarding. Apparently there's a whole lot more to a big wave surfing safari than a few Jan and Dean records, Gidget and a posse of death-defying maniacs willing to risk their lives in the pursuit of catching the ultimate wave.

Right out of the chute Peralta lets us know, in a lightning-fast two-minute introductory montage, that folks have been surfing for at least 1,000 years, all the way back to when Polynesian kings grew tired of ordering their minions around and needed an activity that would allow them to chill. Fast-forward to early-1950s California and a handful of intrepid, daredevil beach boys eager to do anything other than get a job and contribute to society. For these kids, surfing on their homemade boards wasn't just a sport but a way of life - living on the beach, eating out of dumpsters, it was all good so long as when dem giant waves came a calling, they were there to catch 'em.

Courtesy of an enthusiastic narrative and some absolutely stunning photography, Peralta takes us all the way through the Beach Boys/Gidget/Endless Summer era of surfing on to the present, where, thanks to a combination of technical innovations and the current crop of "extreme" sporting enthusiasts, a measly 30-foot wave is now considered the stuff of beginners. These days you're not a big wave surfer until you've climbed aboard a 60-footer and actually lived to tell the tale - which not everyone winds up doing.

True to form, and as evidenced in his celebrated 2002 skateboarding documentary, Dogtown and Z-Boys, Peralta approaches his subject passionately and no doubt spent an exhaustive amount of time in research mode. The result, however, is a doc that's just a little too long and probably of marginal interest to non-surfer types. But damn, there sure is some spectacular photography to be found here.

Riding Giants opens Friday, Sept. 17 at Cinéma du Parc

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