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Daily Planet Correspondent 

The single most thrilling image of the new surfing documentary film, “Surfing for Life,” comes only at the end of the film, and it’s not even a shot of surfing. It’s John “Doc” Ball skateboarding down a sidewalk. Ball was 89 years old. And while he’s not getting radical on that deck, he is doing it. What you can see in his face, behind his own excitement, is fearlessness. 

Judging by the hour-long film by San Francisco-based filmmakers David L. Brown and Roy Earnest (screening this weekend at the UC Theater in Berkeley), the key to healthy aging is do what you love, and try something new. To Ball and the other 60-, 70- and 80-year-old subjects of “Surfing for Life,” growing older gracefully involves getting a little wet, and, if the swells are light, maybe giving sidewalk surfing a try. 

The film’s characters include Doc Ball, now 93, surfer, dentist, and one of the first people to photograph waves from the water with a waterproof camera housing (he published a landmark book of photos, “California Surfriders, 1946”); Woody Brown, 87, surfer, inventor of the catamaran; Anona Napolean, 60, surfer, who, paralyzed at 18 after breaking her back in a diving accident, recuperated to become a championship swimmer; and Eve Fletcher, 73, surfer, animator at Disney Studios, who went on a Hawaiian surfari in 1958. A year later “Gidget” was unleashed on the world and forever tainted the image of girls who surf. 

The film works as a history of surfing in the 20th century, with its cast of senior citizens giving first-hand accounts of surf culture, pre-Gidget (do you know how long “stoked” and “bitchin’” have been in use?). But the heart of the film is a portrait of the cumulative effect of decades of passionate – even single-minded – devotion to a sport and to a lifestyle. 

Earnest works with elderly people as a gerontologist, and is a surfer of 30 years. Brown is a documentarian who made his mark making films about environmental and nuclear technology issues for 15 years. 

“At the end of the Cold War, around ’92 and ’93, I started looking around for something a little lighter, a little more life-affirming and fun,” said Brown. 

The two of them wanted to use surfing to show how it is possible to maintain vitality into the golden years. 

“The sport is so youth-identified, to see an 80- or 90-year-old surfer is eye-opening,” said Brown. “Our key overriding theme was: keep doing what fills your well, what fires you up, what fills your heart with joy, what makes you laugh.” 

Surfing, and a love of water, encourages more than just healthy exercise. The film traces surfing as the key commonality in a global outlook, a sense of community, political activism (re: environmentalism), and spirituality. 

Some sequences in “Surfing for Life” flirt with Zen notions of living in the moment, and accepting what comes. Fred van Dyke, a renown big-wave surfer from the ’60s to the ’80s and another of the film’s subjects, tells of catching glimpses of perfection while inside a 40- to 50-foot wave. 

The film is light on pulse-pumping, apocalyptic wave footage you might see in your typical surf video. It is much more reliant on archival stills and movies from decades previous. But since the early surfing community was small, much of the archival material features the film’s subjects in their younger years, in action. In fact, some stills used in the film were shot by Doc himself. 

Van Dyke, a retired school teacher who splits his time between Hawaii and Montana, said during his stay in the Bay Area this week that although it’s been a “paradise,” his life in surfing is not without regret. “In order for me to be selfish enough to surf as much as I did, I hurt a lot of people.” 

“My involvement with surfing was 90 percent ego and 10 percent need for recognition,” said van Dyke. “I don’t need it anymore.” 

Although essentially a cheerleading film for joie de vivre, “Surfing for Life” touches on the underside of blind devotion. Many of the subjects let their passion for surfing affect their jobs and marriages. 

“In many cases other things have to take a back seat, and in some cases it impacted relationships,” said Brown. “They would all agree with that.” 

“For me it’s like psychotherapy,” said van Dyke about “Surfing for Life.” “Every time I watch it I find something more about my friends and something more about myself.” 

“My wife says this. I’m easier to live with now.” 

“Surfing for Life” screens this Sunday and Monday at the UC Theater, and then goes up at the Fine Arts Cinema in Berkeley May 3-10. For program and ticket information call the UC at 510-843-FILM or the Fine Arts at 510-848-1038.