Good adventure movies have danger, sports and really bad weather. “Under an Arctic Sky” follows a group of surfers in Iceland as they face the biggest storm the country has seen in 25 years. It was a selection for the Tribeca Film Festival and is showing in Rapid City this week.
The trailer for “Under an Arctic Sky” features surfers covered in full body gear riding crystal blue waves. They’re surrounded by snow covered mountains as the Northern Lights dance overhead. Other scenes show the group driving through piles of snow during furious storms.
Chris Burkard is the director of the film. He set out to do an editorial trip for a magazine article to document a surfing adventure.
“To be honest it didn’t really start out like this, it kind of started out as just a trip with friends. And when we got there and we started to see what was happening we realized that everything that was unfolding before us was way bigger than we ever imagined. It was really interesting and super cool to have the ability to kind of go and let the plot sort of unfold. As the trip evolved the story line changed too and became about the relationship that you forge with these wild places and that was a really important thing for us. And I guess that what we all just kind of aimed to share from the beginning. It’s not really so much a film about surfing as it is surf is just a vehicle to share these places.”
Burkard says it wasn’t easy to document the trip. He followed the surfers in December 2015 during the darkest time of the year in Iceland.
“So we had about three and a half hours of visible daylight and essentially that was one of the most challenging things we dealt with because we had no idea what we were really getting ourselves into. So we eventually had to bring a lot of low light equipment a lot of cameras that could be light sensitive to deal with those conditions. So much of the film was shot in darkness and it was really a marriage between technology and passion.”
The group ran into obstacles because of extreme weather conditions. He says the decision to drive through some storms was daunting.
“This is the byproduct of surfing in the arctic. You’re always dealing with harsh conditions. The ocean will freeze over at night and you have to use the boat to break it up. We drove probably 20, 30 hours on the road through some of the most intense storms I have ever seen. And essentially that was kind of the scariest part of the whole trip was having to make our way through those storms. It was kind of the whole purpose and point that because we drove through those storms, we got what we got.”
Despite the extreme situations, Burkard says these surfers aren’t adrenaline junkies. He says the group went surfing when the conditions were clear and used proper gear to ensure their safety. He says they’re more like purists…
“…who love finding and looking for virgin territory. And in Iceland in the arctic you can find a lot of incredibly unridden, un-surfed waves. And so that’s one of the most amazing parts about it.”
Burkard is planning to answer questions over Skype at the Rapid City screening of “Under an Arctic Sky”. The Premiere is scheduled for 7p.m. Thursday, May 25th at West Dakota Improv.