When an Indigenous surf film made its bow at the Oceanside International Film Festival, it was more than just a debut for filmmaker Marc Chavez.
It was a homecoming, and a much-anticipated one at that. The film, Haagua, a 15-minute short focused on Indigenous water culture, was making its San Diego premiere.
“This one is very special to me, because it’s in San Diego. It’s our hometown, and it’s going to be within a surfing community, so I get to see everybody’s reactions,” Chavez said.
Haagua was produced by Native Like Water, a program that reconnects Indigenous youth with their coastal traditions, such as surfing. Chavez founded Native Like Water in 2000 and began his filmmaking journey in 2022, joined by his co-director for the film, Octavio Coutiño Aceves.
The official Haagua film poster. (Image courtesy of Native Like Water)“I wanted to make a film because I felt like supporting a new narrative was super important, especially at that time, coming out of Covid,” Chavez said. “We needed to really bring a new narrative to the table. And I felt with media and filmmaking, it’s one of the strongest ways we could do it.”
With the film, Chavez hopes to reach a larger audience than Native Like Water could. Beyond Oceanside, where the film screened Feb. 21 (the festival runs through Feb. 28), Haagua has been active on the festival circuit and is set to be part of San Diego Latino Film Festival in March.
The exposure is good but he also wants to extend the story of Indigenous coastal traditions and have the film stretch across cultures.
“It’s about also uniting, kind of, two communities together based on one theme, which again is this respect for the ocean,” Chavez said. “So the film is not just made for or Native American folks to see it and to get inspired, but it’s made for for non-native people to kind of be able to see things through a different lens and perhaps spark a new type of thinking, or an interest on how they could be a part of that, or how we relate with the ocean.”
Everyone connects to the film in a different way, Sophia Uribe said. Uribe is the chief operating officer of Native Like Water and played a role in the film.
“I think that folks who don’t have Indigenous backgrounds are really able to see the visuals of the story and hear the story, and kind of shift their perspective on surfing,” she said.
The film, for Uribe, isn’t just about bridging the gap between cultures; it’s also about representation in the surfing community.
“I think around surf culture, there is like this kind of exclusivity or hierarchy that you can experience in the lineup, whether you’re a person of color, sometimes being the only girl, sometimes being out there on a board that most people don’t ride,” she said. “I think having a film like this shows folks that anything is possible in the water, and that some folks are on different journeys.”
Uribe graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a degree in Ecology and Environmental Science. Chavez was a long-time family friend of hers and allowed her to participate in one of the Native Like Water programs in 2021, where she fell in love with the water.
The program revitalized her while she was taking a break from school due to personal reasons. It helped her find her spark again. When she graduated, she started working with Native Like Water, first as a grant writer and then more, scoring Haagua’s seed funding from the World Surf League.
And she didn’t stop there either. Uribe took on the role of “sea captain” in the film, one of the 13 characters represented by people from 13 different tribal nations.
Out of the 13 native characters, five are surfers. Casting them was no easy feat, according to Chavez.
“Just a challenge to feature local Native American surfers, there’s not a lot of them. And I’d like to say that the ones that do exist are in the film,” Chavez said.
In fact, one of the main characters and surfers is Shuuluk Leo-Retz from the Viejas Band of the Kumeyaay Nation. Some of Haagua was based on Leo-Retz’s own story and experiences.
But the script wasn’t always that way. As any film does, Haagua had its ups and downs. The first couple of versions of the script had to be scrapped, Chavez said — the story had to grow naturally. And on top of that, they were working with the ocean, which was by no means cooperative. Hunting the perfect waves for each shot took time.
Haagua has racked up several awards while touring festivals, a testament to the dedication of its makers. It won the Indigenous Social, Political, Cultural Impact Award at the Latino and Native American Film Festival — one of the many awards from around the world.
While the awards speak for themselves, Chavez’s effort wasn’t just about the accolades. It was about building a legacy that will outlive him and reach further than he can on his own. After Haagua completes its rounds at film festivals, Chavez hopes that its cultural ripple effects will continue.
For instance, Native Like Water is creating a curriculum that teachers can use in their classrooms to educate students about Indigenous perspectives.
“[The film] could kind of extend in different directions with without me having to be there,” Chavez said. “It could reach a larger audience than just me, and it can definitely reach a larger audience than just the community that we serve.”
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