Agée de 19 ans, Felicity Palmateer est actuellement classée 19ème au WQS. Surfeuse depuis ses 4 ans, Felicity ne peut se passer de sa passion pour la glisse et c’est depuis ses premiers canards que son père, Warrick Palmateer, la suit et l’encourage dans sa carrière d’athlète professionnelle. Clare Plueckhahn & Fran Derham, deux jeunes réalisatrices australiennes, ont voulu peindre le portrait de cette surfeuse professionnelle, tout en pointant du doigt la pression subie par les jeunes athlètes féminines… Un sujet qui, évidemment, a attiré mon attention…
Felicity Palmateer starring So It Goes by Clare Plueckhahn & Fran Derham
C’est depuis sa première vague que Felicity Palmateer est tombée amoureuse du surf. Et cela, son père l’a tout de suite compris. C’est pour cette raison que le papa reste aux côtés de sa petite protégée, lors de ses entrainements et de ses compétitions. Oui, Felicity a toujours rêvée de devenir surfeuse pro et maintenant qu’elle est classée au rang des meilleures, qu’elle fait partie du top 20 WQS, elle qui n’a jamais baissé les bras, ce n’est pas maintenant qu’elle va se décourager…
Et pourtant, il y aurait de quoi. Car même si sa passion a grandi avec elle et qu’aujourd’hui son rêve s’est réalisé, Felicity se doit de garder la face dans un monde qui se montre parfois très et/ou trop dur. Toujours s’entrainer pour progresser afin de garder sa place et gravir les échelons, voyager à des heures d’avions pour les contests afin de battre ses concurrentes, garder son poids forme pour le surf mais aussi pour représenter la marque qui la sponsorise (Billabong), jongler avec les médias… Tant et tant de pression qu’une athlète de son niveau doit assumer malgré son jeune un âge …
Felicity Palmateer, surfeuse du WQS
Et voilà ce dont traite le dernier projet de Clare Plueckhahn & Fran Derham (First Love, Lunchbreak, vous les connaissez déjà si vous suivez mon blog). Avec ‘So It Goes’, mes deux chouchoutes de réalisatrices nous ouvrent les portes d’une nouvelle dimension du surf féminin : certes vivre de sa passion de surfeuse c’est sympa mais ce n’est pas tous les jours faciles ! Cependant, malgré les mauvais côtés, le fait d’essayer est déjà très gratifiant et même si le challenge vaut ce qu’il vaut mais au final, le plus important est de ne jamais laisser tomber ce que l’on aime… Car, après tout, la difficulté fait partie du jeu et la jouissance du ride nous faisant oublier tout le reste, c’est aussi peut-être pour cela qu’on s’accroche… ‘When the going gets tough, I go for a surf – and everything just seems to fall into place. When I’m having a problem I get in the water and seem to find a solution.’ Felicity Palmateer.
‘So It Goes’ fait déjà parlé de lui, checkez vos quelques sites web préférés et jugez par vous même… Clare & Fran sont décidément en place ! Je ne sais pas ce que vous en pensez mais moi je suis fan du boulot de ces deux jeunes surfeuses/réalisatrices. Du coup, voici une autre exclu TripSurfeuse : l’interview de Clare Plueckhahn & Fran Derham sur leur dernier bébé !
‘I hope that everyone can take something away from this clip, as everyone who is out there trying to make it in whatever field they are in faces challenges daily. This is just a little reminder to never lose sight the things that you love – because in the end that’s the reason why you keep doing what you do.’ Clare Plueckhahn
Le film :
L’interview :
TripSurfeuse : After Lunchbreak that pictures a bunch of pretty damn good surfer girls taking over some guys in the water, you strike back with a brand new short movie untitled ‘So It Goes’, starring professional surfer girl Felicity Palmateer. What caught your attention about this girl for you to film her?
Fran Derham & Clare Plueckhahn : Felicity was actually in Lunchbreak. So while we were shooting that we got to know her pretty well – and having never been to WA
So, to release this new movie, you left your work based in Melbourne to go to world wide famous and beautiful surf break Margaret River. What were your reasons to shoot over there?
We’ve never shot anything over on the West Coast and we were desperate for an excuse to get over there. Felicity is from WA and grew up surfing the breaks of Margaret River – so it only seemed natural to shoot her over there.
Au fameux break de Margaret River pour So It Goes
The main topic of ‘So It Goes’ reveals another aspect of feminine surfing, not only the performance of the athlete but all the pressure a professional surfer girl has to face everyday to keep on ranking in the elite (the WQS). Do you reckon Felicity Palmateer (or any other girl) deals with more pressure from others and herself than if she were a guy and why?
Any professional athlete is under an extreme amount of pressure – but there seems to be an expectation in the surf industry (and perhaps even in society) for girls to be beautiful as well as very good at their sport. And that’s not always the case – and shouldn’t have to be. Felicity is stunning but she still faces the pressure body image as well as the challenges of being an elite sportsperson. I’m not saying guys don’t feel that pressure but girls tend to more.
Once again, going deep into a professional surfer girl’s thoughts is pretty new in the Surf Media. If surfer girls must be your main inspiration, your sensibility as women exposes a great point of view about the surfing. What did/has inspired you to concentrate on directing your career towards female surfing? And who is your main inspiration?
Although we’re both surfers, Clare and I also work in the Australian Film & TV industry. And in that world you can’t put anything together without telling a story. So I guess our goal is to combine our passion for surfing with our day jobs by creating surfing stories. Little clips that bring the film & surfing world closer together. We think female surfing is a niche that not many people work in – so we’re making ourselves experts. That said the next clip that we’re going to do is a guys one – so I shouldn’t speak to soon.
When it comes to inspiration – it’s girls like Felicity that get our attention – and when someone inspires us we want to share that with everyone. We’re also inspired by clips like the ‘Dark Side of The Lens’ and other amazing films that manage to capture our hearts.
Felicity Palmateer dans So It Goes
Surfer girls have never been as popular as nowadays (thank god, for their styles and not only for their bodies) and with movies such as award winners ‘First Love’, acclaimed ’Lunchbreak’ and brand new ‘So It Goes’, the next generation of both girls and boys seems to be looking forward to share more and more waves together. Would you like to be targeting this type of outcome? Or do you attend to deliver another message?
The messages that we naturally keep on injecting into our films are ‘follow your dreams’ and ‘you can do anything when you put your mind to it’. And we do that almost by mistake. Maybe because that’s what we’re telling ourselves at the same time as we’re trying to tell everyone else…. who knows…?! Each time we start a project we set out to tackle different themes but we always discover something new through the process. Nothing turns out exactly as we intended it. So when we embark on each new idea we don’t know exactly what message it will have. We just want things to be beautiful, to try and tell a story and to inspire whoever watches our work to get up and go surfing.
Ok, suivons Felicity Palmateer pour un p'tit surf ! 
Cheers girls !
Et si vous voulez en savoir plus :
Fran Derham - fran@coswecan.com.au / +61 (3) 402 257 323
Clare Plueckhahn - clare@coswecan.com.au / +61 (3) 422 592 601