Juries

Masterful and enigmatic pro surfer from Ormond Beach, Florida; four-time world champion (1994–97), and the omnipresent public face for female surfing in the mid-’90s. “She’s the first woman to cross over into surfing celebrityhood,” Outside magazine wrote about Andersen in 1996, “and achieve a dominance that made the pig dudes shut up and take notice.”

Surfer put Andersen on the cover (the first female-surfer cover shot in 15 years), with a sly blurb directed at an overwhelmingly male readership: “Lisa Andersen Surfs Better Than You.” She was meanwhile profiled in newspapers and general-interest magazines around the world. In Outside’s “Gidget Kicks Ass” feature, Andersen was lauded for her surfing talent, good looks, and determination, but described as “oddly impenetrable [and] closed down, as if the personality of a 17-year-old linebacker had been grafted onto her feminine psyche.”

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Andersen is a six-time winner of the Surfer Magazine Readers Poll Award (1992, 1994, 1996–99); in 1998 she was voted “Female Athlete of the Year” by Condé Nast’s Sports for Women magazine; in 1999 she was the only female surfer, along with Kathy “Gidget” Kohner, to be listed in Surfer’s “25 Most Influential Surfers of the Century” article; in 2000 she was ranked #76 in Sports Illustrated for Women‘s “Greatest Sportswomen of the Century.”

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Andersen was inducted into the Surfer’s Hall of Fame at Huntington Beach in 2002. The Surf Industry Manufacturers Association named Andersen their Waterman of the Year in 2007. Fearlessness: The Story of Lisa Andersen, a biography written by Nick Carroll, was published in 2007. She’s been featured in dozens of surf movies and videos, including TROUBLE: The Lisa Andersen Story (2017), Atlantic Crossing (1989), Surfers: The Movie (1990), Triple C (1996), Performers III (1999), and Tropical Madness (2001).

Takuji Masuda, winner of the Florida Surf Film Festival 2017 Best Documentary – Feature for BUNKER77, is a Japanese Longboard champion from Kamakura known for his committed nose riding at Pipeline.  He is also the former publisher of a beach culture, trilingual magazine Super X Media and has curated art shows around the world. Masuda has served on the boards of directors of World Surf League and Pepperdine University, his alma mater, from which he received a bachelor of the arts in 1993 and Master in Fine Arts in 2017. He is also the head coach of Pepperdine University’s esteemed surf team. Masuda’s critically-acclaimed, award-winning documentary film, BUNKER77, is streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime.

Will Oldham (born January 15, 1970) is an American singer-songwriter and actor. From 1993 to 1997, he performed and recorded in collaboration with dozens of other musicians under variations of Palace (Palace, Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, and Palace Music).  After briefly publishing music under his own name, in 1998 he adopted Bonnie “Prince” Billy as the name for most of his work. Oldham is known for his “do-it-yourself punk aesthetic and blunt honesty”, and his music has been likened to Americana, folk, roots, country, punk, and indie rock. He has been called an “Appalachianpost-punk solipsist”, with a voice that has been described as “a fragile sort-of warble frittering around haunted melodies in the American folk or country tradition.” Source: Wikipedia

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Will has collaborated with Thomas Campbell and other filmmakers on original soundtracks, including The Present, This Must Be the Place (Sean Penn and Francis McDormand), and his work often appears on film and televsion, including HBO MAX’s True Detective (Season 2).

Marcus Sanders has been the editor of Surfline for more than a decade, which sounds like a really long time but has, in fact, gone by pretty quickly. His work has also appeared in various surf magazines and websites internationally. He worked on the Encyclopedia of Surfing with Matt Warshaw and helped adapt Dante’s Divine Comedy into modern english vernacular with Sandow Birk. He also learned how to surf in San Francisco, a silly proposition at best, and continues to live in the city with his wife and two daughters, despite the fact that Google is taking over the place and parking still sucks.

Ashton is the director/producer of Red Bull’s No Contest and No Contest:  Off Tour. He’s the former editor in chief at Stab and has written features and directed films for Stab Premium, Surfer, Bon Apetit, The Surfer’s Journal, The New York Times/Herald-Tribune, Vice, and n+1, held marketing positions at GoPro, Old Navy, and Sightglass, founded The Compound in Sarasota, Florida, and attended the New School, in New York City, for Non-Fiction Creative Writing, where he studied under Mark Greif, Margo Jefferson, Chris Hondros, Christopher Hitchens, and Andrew Meier. 

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Growing up on the Gulf Coast of Florida, Ashton gleaned his appreciation for riding waves and telling stories from his father, Mark, a mailman/surfer who lived through the culture’s adventurous ’70s to tell some tales, and who as a proud second-generation Post Man enjoys the gift for gab as well as an uncanny ability to Listen. When not cracking the whip in Stab‘s Los Angeles office producing surfing’s most high profile projects, Ashton is chasing waves up and down the California coast in his beloved Ford F-150 freedom bird, Rocinante, on international strikes with his younger brother, Jack, or sourcing vintage American artifacts with his partner, Samantha.

Joe Turpel started surfing on the South shore of Oahu, Hawaii. His dad, a former lifeguard, surfer and sailor began pushing him and his sister into waves on the weekends. When Joe turned 13, his family moved to Laguna Niguel, California where he joined the high school surf team. He later went to the University of California, Santa Barbara where he competed on the surf team and clinched a national title. While studying Communications and Dramatic Arts he interned at the ABC affiliate, KEYT, in the Newsroom and Sports department. After graduation, he got his first announcing job working for the National Scholastic Surfing Association, and a year later in 2007 he delivered his first broadcast in Brazil.

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Turpel is entering his fifth year calling play by play for the WCT. He has also been the play-by-play voice for the Billabong Pipe Masters, Vans Triple Crown, Rip Curl Search Events and the Volcom Pipe Pro amongst others. Turpel has published work with Surfing Magazine and worked as the Associate Editor at Surfline.

Delmarva born, North Florida-bred writer and journalist, Matthew Shaw, first gained an appreciation for surfing’s unconventional lineage through his late-father’s tales of psychedelic surf exploits during the mid-70s, post-shortboard revolution, pre-competitive surf-boom era. After earning a post-graduate degree in History from the University of North Florida and a decade on the West coast spent mostly in San Francisco’s quirky, left field Ocean Beach surf community, Shaw’s writing career began in earnest as a reporter for, then editor of an award winning alternative newsweekly in Jacksonville, FL, Folio Weekly, where he did his share of muckraking, covering everything from shady development projects to metropolitan politics to the area’s emerging arts and music scenes. Since joining the team at SURFER Magazine in 2015, Shaw’s traveled the globe as a features writer for the magazine, chronicling contemporary surfdom through profiles and travelogues.

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He’s continues to report on national stories for The New York Times, while penning pieces for The Surfer’s Journal. Aside from his work as a writer, Shaw tours with the Jacksonville-based, psychedelic, garage-surf trio, The Mothers Gooses. He lives in Atlantic Beach with his wife, Samantha–a Public Defender with the 4th Judicial Circuit.

When we decided to show surf films down in Cocoa Beach, we received unwavering support from Bruce Reynolds in promotion, hospitality, and more, especially at his home base of Cafe’ Surfinista.  The original, and European-influenced, mostly vegan menu puts your body in the driver’s seat for your next surf, and with his support, we managed a few fantastic screenings before we scaled back to our home base of Atlantic Center for the Arts.  Our friendship with him grew, over a few rounds of golf, where he beat me on my home course, and then, later down the road to see hime attending nearly all of our events an hour to the north. His artistic sensibilities and work ethic landed his larger format visual works a showing in the Pabst Visitors Center and Gallery during our main event in 2018 and a feature article in an upcoming issue of The Surfer’s Journal.  His experience in the water, on land, and with the brush has earned him the thankless position of serving on our short documentary jury for 2022 and beyond.  We are proud to have his positive, energetic stoke on the panel, and we can’t wait to get him back up here for more good times.

With extensive expertise in digital media, Brad Moody seamlessly merges passion, research, and hands-on application to excel in the Electronic Arts domain. Holding titles as an Apple Distinguished Educator and a Certified Trainer for Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve, Brad’s achievements underscore his unwavering commitment. As the Interim Chair of MCCMEA – School of Digital Media Production at Daytona State College, he’s instrumental in sculpting its path towards innovation, aligning with industry standards, and championing student aspirations. His tenure from 2010 to 2018 at the American University in Dubai, serving as Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Digital Media Major, resulted in key accolades like Apple’s Center of Excellence nomination and recognition by Blackmagic Design. Brad’s enduring impact is evident through his promotion of academic advancement, pivotal industry-academia partnerships, and his commitment to fostering creativity.