Thomson: Out In The Line-Up (2014)

Over the last few years, there’s been a push towards greater LGBT visibility in the sporting world. Some sports have been at the vanguard of that movement, while others have lagged behind – and not always the sports you might expect. Surfing, as Out in the Line-Up makes clear, is an arena in which it’s been particularly difficult to counteract homophobia. It’s about a pair of gay Australian surfers, Thomas Castets and David Wakefield, who travel around the world to see if they can find any other surfers who are willing to be open about their sexuality. Although they do eventually discover a large number of surfers willing to tell their stories, the film opens with them contemplating themselves as the only two gay surfers who are out, or at least the only two that they know of – and that gives the film quite an epic, momentous sweep, not least because the surfing world is already highly diasporic, clustered around remote micro-communities that feel light years away from the cosmpolitan urban cores that have traditionally served as beacons for gay liberation. Within that sweep, the gay global surfing community is even more diasporic and scattered, to the point where it feels like it can only really be conceptualised digitally, perhaps explaining why the film also traces Castets’ effort to create a site for gay surfers to meet and chat and surf each other. Structured somewhere between a travelogue and talking heads session, it’s pretty much just a series of interviews intercut with spectacular surfing footage – it’s won accolades for its sports photography – but that candour is also what allows director Ian Thomson to let these incredible personalities speak for themselves. And it is incredible to see LGBT people who so thoroughly defy any stereotypes perpetuated by the mainstream media – an act of protest in itself, really – not least in their commitment to a solidarity and friendship that goes beyond any single romatic or sexual attachment. Perhaps that’s why it’s most potent when it converges sex and surfing into a medium that anyone can simply plunge into, and share with everyone else - it feels as if all these surfers, even the straight ones, are rehearsing their way out of the closet with each tube that they navigate, each shoulder that they climb.